Billy and Mandy and the Lost Plot Device
by tiakall
Summary: It's a summary/In the form of a haiku/Maybe it won't suck? / Grim and Mandy must/Find their missing plot device/Billy is a crab
1. Chapter 1

"Congratulations. You've officially begun to waste your time."

"Hey, Mandy."

"Yeah, Grim?"

Mandy and Grim sat on the couch at Billy's home, as usual, watching television: a rerun of Grim's favorite show which the narrator is too lazy to be arsed to look up the name of. Grim wasn't paying attention to much outside of the hot vampiress, and Mandy wasn't paying attention to much outside of the bloody, explosive deaths. "Oh, that was a good one."

"Ugh," Grim groaned, "I always hate it when she goes for the spleen. Anyway, like I was saying...Hey, Mandy."

She calmly punched him in the face. "Get to the point."

Grim scowled as best he could with a fist in his face, and rearranged his skull. "You know how our episodes often end with something really crazy? Like that time you became the size of the universe?"

"Yeah. That was pretty boring, actually."

"Or that time that Billy had that massive rash because of the magic bubblegum?"

A smirk tugged at Mandy's lips. Oh, she remembered. "And?"

"Well, things are always back to normal by the next episode, right?"

"Right."

"Well, Mandy, I don't know if you've noticed...but Billy is _still_ a crab."

At the mention of his name, Billy, who was indeed currently a red crab with an extraordinarily large nose, came skittering sideways into the room. "I LIKE PIE!" he announced to no one in particular.

Mandy regarded her dimwitted companion. "Sure it's not an improvement?"

"Well, I don't know," Grim said with a frown. "It certainly hasn't made him any quieter."

"PIE! I LIKE PIE! PIE PIE PIE PIE PI PI PI THREE POINT ONE FOUR ONE FIVE NINE!"

Mandy looked at Grim. "You know, a pot of water and some butter would fix that."

"I'll get the water boiling~" Grim declared, getting up off the couch and moving in the direction of the kitchen.

Or so he thought. Billy's mom stood in the doorway, glaring daggers at Grim. "Mr. Reaper," she said in as firm a tone as one could manage with the Grim Reaper, "if that is your idea of a joke I do not appreciate it. The very idea that you would try and EAT my son is-"

"It's hardly a joke," Grim replied, nonplussed. "I'm sure there's plenty to go around. His nose alone would probably feed half of Endsville."

"It's not like we haven't eaten him before," Mandy chimed in.

"Mandy! I would expect a girl of your age and intelligence to not encourage such behavior out of the Grim Reaper. Mr. Reaper!" she addressed him next. "You have made many a sick, twisted, demented comment in your presence under my roof, but no more! This time, I-" Billy's mom, who was still under the impression that her son was still a human like he was around 90% of the time, finally laid eyes on the crab in the middle of her living room, who was busy making bubbles with his snot. "Oh! What a horrid thing! What kind of monster have you dragged into my house ithis/i time, Mr. Reaper!"

"Hi, mom," Billy said with the cheer of one who is perpetually ignorant of his situation, waving a claw. "Do we gots some pie?"

"Billy?" Billy's mom reeled, kneeling on the floor next to the crab Billy. "Oh, my poor little baby boy! What's happened to you?"

"It's a long story, actually," Grim began. "You see, we ran into this alien cult, and-"

"Not another word out of you, Mr. Reaper! I naturally expect you will undo your foul curse and return my son to normal at once!"

"Well, that's the thing, uh, Billy's mom." Grim said, holding up his bony hands. "You see, after the Bandersnatch got involved-"

"Hi, honey!" Billy's dad burst into the scene just then, scratching at his belly, a piece of toilet paper trailing on his shoe. As usual, Billy's dad was in a dignified, professional, clean state. "Have you got the number to that plumber? You might want to call him again. The log needs a bit of trimming if you know what I mean!"

"Harold!" Billy's mom shrieked. "Look at what they've done to your son!" She held Billy the crab up for his dad to inspect.

"Hi, son!" Billy's dad greeted. "Looking good as always!"

"Harold! Your SON is a CRAB!"

"Nonsense, he's perfectly cheery as always. A regular chip off the old block, right son?"

"Dad, do we gots pie?" Billy wanted to know.

"Well, I don't know," Billy's dad replied. "Let's go find out!" With that, the pair wandered into the kitchen.

"Harold!"

Mandy watched the pair of dimwits leave before looking at Grim. "Watching Billy's family is almost as entertaining as the television."

"I rate them above an infomercial, but not as good as anything with actual content. Not that there's much of that on nowadays," Grim grumbled. "When are they going to offer me that reality television contract? It's not real if there's no death! And I am the one who deals in death, after all!"

"Grim? When they say reality, they don't mean it." Mandy hopped off the couch, going to the kitchen door with Grim. Billy the crab and his dad were busy tearing apart the kitchen looking for the elusive pie while Billy's mom shrieked at the pair of them about how they didn't UNDERSTAND and how that MONSTER was making a MOCKERY of her LIFE and how she never expected her marriage to end up like this and all she wanted was a normal family but ever since the Grim Reaper had shown up things had been RUINED. ("Hey," Grim protested, "I'm sure I'm not responsible for _all_ of this.")

"So why do you think Billy's still a crab?" Mandy commented to Grim.

"I don't know. If we've started a new episode, he should be back to normal. We don't do two-parters." He shrugged. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that this is a fanfiction."

"They got me in a fanfiction?" Mandy groaned, putting a hand to her face. "I thought we were done with those after that comic fiasco. Hey, you losers!" she directed to the audience. "Go read a _real_ book."

"Stop that. The author is desperate for kudos, so don't go scaring the audience off." Grim shook his head. "Either way, we won't know standing around here."

"So what do you suggest?"

"We ask the person who knows everything there is to know, of course."

"Which would be...?"

"My grandmama," Grim said with delight. "Oh, this will be delightful. I don't think we've spoken since last season. Let's go get a bottle for the message and find a toilet. Preferably one that _he_ hasn't used," Grim added with a gesture at Billy's dad.

"Ooh, where are we going?" Billy wanted to know, skittering over to his two friends. "Are we going to find pie?"

"Maybe, if you're quiet for a little wh-"

"PIE," Billy interrupted, "PIE PIE PIE TWO FIVE NINE TWO SIX FIVE THREE NINE"

Grim made a face as Billy continued to recite decimal places in the background. "On second thought, let's just go visit Grandmama directly. It'll be quicker and the long distance charges aren't as bad."

"Sure. Things were getting boring here, anyway."

Grim pulled his scythe out of his robe, cutting open a vortex in space and time. "After you," he said politely to Mandy. She moved to go in, but Billy skittered in first. Through the hole there was the sound of a crack of thunder and Billy's scream. "Oops," Grim commented. "I forgot about Grandmama's anti-hole in space and time security system."

"Your grandmother has a security system for that?"

"Well, let's just say it's a long story. At least it saves us the pot of water." Grim moved through, followed by Mandy.

The area they stepped out into was hot and humid, as was to be expected from a Jamaica beach house. In the kitchen, Grim's grandmother was sharpening a knife over a shrieking Billy. "Grandson!" she greeted merrily, dropping the knife into the counter point first, millimeters away from Billy's nose. "I haven't seen you since last season! Come give your grandmama a hug~"

"Grandmama!" he greeted in return, embracing her. "How have you been?"

"Oh, the same as the last time I was on screen, I suppose," she said, waving one hand. "I love the present, by the way." She gestured to the terrified crab Billy on her counter.

"Actually, I suppose we'd better keep that one," Grim said with a sigh. "Though he would make a good dinner...He's the reason we're here, actually."

"Oh? Why's that, grandson? Not enough meat on him? We can change that, you know."

"Actually, the whole crab thing started last episode. You see, Billy stumbled across an ancient idol of this alien cult, and-"

"Ah, say no more, I understand completely," Grim's grandmother cut him off. "So what's the problem? He should be fine by next episode."

"That's the thing, Grandmama... It IS the next episode. And Billy's still a crab."

She turned back to him, regarding Billy as he proceeded to poke the various contents of her counter with a claw. "There are worse forms to be stuck in, I suppose."

"It's not really that _he's_ stuck... It's more that, what if other things get stuck as well?"

"Well, I suppose I could take a look at him," Grim's grandmother said slowly. "In the meantime, how about you do something for your old grandmama?"

"Sure, grandmama! Anything for you!"

"You had to say _anything_, didn't you?"

Grim scowled down into the toilet, then at the plunger in his hand. "What is wrong with toilets in this world? Can't anyone do their business somewhere without things getting backed up on them? And you call yourselves civilized."

"Just get to work," Mandy told him. "It's starting to smell in here."

Grim growled something under his breath as he began to plunge the toilet. Several minutes later, the toilet was still as unswirly as before. "Dang nabbit!" Grim shouted, tossing the plunger out the window and hitting a cat with it. "That's it, I'm doing this my way."

"Uh, Grim," Mandy began. "I don't think that's a good id-"

With a flashy background of hellfire, Grim drew forth his scythe, aiming it at the toilet. Pointing it down into the bowl with an evil laugh, he let loose.

The house proceeded to explode.

"GRIM!" came a cry from the beach, where Grim's grandmother had been thrown, feet sticking out of the sand and arms trying to reattach them to her torso. "Haven't I warned you about that toilet before?"

"Oh, I forgot," Grim realized suddenly. "That toilet's got a space/time portal in it. That would explain it!"

Mandy wiped soot off her face and gave him a withering look. "Who unplugs a toilet with the scythe of the Grim Reaper, anyway?"

"Well, the Grim Reaper does, obviously," Grim said with a snort.

"Grimmy!" Grim's grandmother shouted at him. "If you've blown up my house and it's the next episode already, where am I going to live? You terrible grandchild, driving your own grandmama out of house and home!"

"Now, now, Grandmama," Grim said. "I'm sure you could stay with Billy's family for a little while. They'd love to have you and your cooking."

"Well, I could use a little vacation," she mused. "It's gotten awfully hot here lately."

"Are you trying to kill Billy's mom?" Mandy whispered to Grim.

"Well, I am behind on my quotas," he admitted. "Grandmama, do you know what might be causing things to stay the same? Why are there actual consequences to our actions?"

She thought about it. "If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say something's happened to your plot device."

"Our plot device?" Grim and Mandy echoed.

"Yes. You see," and she pulled a diagram out of her robe to demonstrate, "the town of Endsville and beyond, in this definition of reality, operate on the Rule of Funny. If it's funny, it happens. If it's not, it doesn't happen. The plot device is the thing that keeps it all staying funny smoothly. A plot device controls the plot holes that inevitably happen due to the Rule of Funny."

"I didn't know there were rules," Billy mused. "Let's break 'em! We're rebels!"

"You want me to let her at you with the knives again?" Grim said to him.

"Where can we find this plot device?" Mandy directed at Grim's grandmother.

She shrugged. "Normally, you can't, I would imagine. That's about as much help as I can give you. We need to make this last for a whole story, after all. Now, I'm off for my vacation! I think I'll start with a bubble bath." She opened a hole in time and space and skipped through cheerfully, one foot following behind the rest of her.

"Somehow, I'm a little sorry I won't be there to see her arrival," Grim commented.

"Do you know anything about this plot device?" Mandy asked.

"No. That's the first I've heard of it."

"Hey," Billy complained loudly. "There's no pie here."

Mandy and Grim looked at each other. "Well, if I was a plot device, where would I hide?" Grim asked.

Mandy's eyes lit up. "I may not know where a plot device hides...but I know who might stand to benefit from all this."

"Benefit? Who could possibly benefit from all this? It'll cause chaos!" Grim threw his hands in the air to emphasize his point.

"Exactly."

A look of understanding dawned on Grim's face. "Eris!"

Mandy nodded. "I think it's time we paid our good friend, the goddess of Chaos, a visit."

"Can do," Grim said, pulling out his scythe again and making a hole. This time, instead of entering it, he pulled out a phone.

"You're giving her a call?" Mandy asked in disbelief.

"Well, it's only the polite thing to do."

Mandy shook her head as Grim dialed a number, waiting patiently. "Thank you for calling the Goddess Hotline," the phone said in a pleasant tone. "This call may be recorded or monitored for quality purposes. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed. To inquire about divine openings, please press 1."

"Tempting, but no," Mandy said.

"For our general polytheistic hotline, please press 2."

"What's a polytheistic hotline? Is that like when you marry a bunch of people?" Billy wanted to know.

"To continue in Japanese, sanban wo hite kudasai."

"What is this, a crappy anime fanfic?" Mandy complained.

"To speak directly to a hot, single goddess who wants to talk to _you_, please press 4."

"Their methods make me wonder," Grim said as he pressed the button.

"Thank you for calling the Goddess Hotline," the voice continued in a decidedly more sultry tone. "If you'd like to speak to Aphrodite, as I'm sure you do, please press 1. If married women are your thing, you definitely want Hera. Please press 2. If smart chicks are a real turn-on for you, please press 3 for Athena. And if you want to talk to the naughtiest, most wild babe on the Goddess Hotline, that queen among queens, Eris, then don't press a number at all, but twirl in a circle while wearing a wombat and shouting, 'Baka baka kawaii kawaii neko sugoi desu!'"

The three of them looked at each other. "That sounds like the sort of thing she'd do, admittedly," Grim said.

"Well, go ahead," Mandy said. "Have you got a wombat?"

Grim shrugged, then looked through his pockets. He pulled out a few loose bills, some business cards, a peach, a pie, a kitchen sink, a guy named Humphrey who began eating the peach, an elephant, a small galaxy, and John McCain before finally emerging with a wombat, holding it aloft like a trophy. "Isn't that convenient?"

"PIE," Billy shouted immediately, jumping into the dessert and covering himself with fruit filling.

"Why do you have John McCain in your pockets?" Mandy asked, watching the politician wander straight into the still-open space-time portal.

"In case I need to fill my quota in a hurry." Placing the wombat on his head, Grim began to turn around in a circle. "Baka baka kawaii neko sugoi desu?"

"You missed a kawaii," the voice on the phone said.

"Oh, sorry," Grim said, starting over. "Baka baka-hey, wait, I know that voice. Eris!"

A sigh. "I never have any fun with you."

"Why are you having your callers shout in Japanese?" Mandy wanted to know.

"You'd be surprised what you can do with some teenaged girls," Eris commented. "Especially when you offer them two men in compromising positions~"

"That was more than I needed to know," Grim said with a shake of his head.

"Anyway, can you make it snappy?" the goddess of chaos continued. "I sort of have a crisis on my hands and I really need to get going."

"A crisis? What's the matter?"

"Oh, everything," she said with another sigh. "For one, my golden apple, my symbol of chaos itself and the root of my power..."

"Has it been stolen or something?" Grim asked anxiously.

"It's a peach."

Grim blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"A peach!" she shrieked into the phone. "How can I make public appearances without my golden apple? 'Here I am, goddess of chaos, with my golden fuzzy butt'. A peach isn't even an _attractive_ fruit! It's a hideous color and the fuzz gets everywhere, and really, a crack? So I'm a little stressed out right now. And if that wasn't bad enough, I've broken a nail!"

"Eris, listen," Grim said. "Our plot device has gone missing and we need to find it. This is just the sort of thing you'd do."

"You have no sensitivity!" Eris shrieked into the phone with enough force to knock his hood off. "With the way you treat a girl, no wonder you've never had a girlfriend!"

"Now that's hitting below the belt!" Grim shouted back. "My love life has nothing to do with this!"

"It has everything to do with anything, you bony freak! Leave me alone!" she screamed, hanging up the phone.

"Well, that went well," Mandy noted.

"Conversations with Eris always do, if you've noticed," Grim grumbled. "Someone needs to get that girl some lithium."

"Or an electroshock treatment. So now what, genius?" Mandy asked him.

"I think we need to see exactly what Eris is up to," Grim said, pulling out his scythe again. "Let's pay her a visit."

"You think she'll see us?" Mandy asked.

"I didn't say we'd ask," Grim pointed out. "Besides, she doesn't have an anti-hole in space and time security system." Grim sliced through the air, then picked up Billy the crab, still covered in pie bits, and tossed him through. On the other side was a crack of thunder and Billy's scream. "Oh," Grim said in mild surprise, "I guess I was wrong."

"You've done that a lot lately," Mandy pointed out as she followed him in.

"So sue me." Grim looked around at where they had emerged: the boardroom of Eris's cereal making factory. At least, he was pretty sure it was: the shrieking miniature pink elephants swarming over everything made it hard to tell. "Wow, when Eris said she had things on her mind, I guess she wasn't kidding," Grim commented, eyebrow ridges raising.

"You got that right!" Eris wailed from her corner of the boardroom. The gorgeous blonde goddess was standing on top of her desk, kicking at the elephants that tried to get close.

"Mommy, we love you!" the miniature pink elephants chorused in unison.

Mandy stared at the elephants. "This isn't another repeat of the Happy Huggy Stuffy Bear incident, is it?"

"Have you ever heard of the ancient taboo of the Squishyface race?" Eris asked her.

"No."

"Then you're better off not knowing." Eris kicked at another elephant. "I hope you've come to help me out, otherwise I really haven't got the time to talk."

Grim and Mandy exchanged glances. "Well, I am behind on my quota," Grim said slowly.

"You can't do that!" Billy the crab protested. "They're living creatures! They just want love and affection!"

"Actually, they're undead animated creatures who eat souls of obnoxious little boys," Eris told him. "Also, they're spiders in disguise. By the way, why are you a crab?"

Billy the crab looked at the miniature pink elephant that was trying to snuggle up with him. "SPIDER!" he shrieked, swatting it away with a claw. "GRIM KILL THEM ALL! I HATE SPIDERS!"

"Why, thank you for giving me permission," Grim said with a metaphorical roll of his eyes (since he couldn't roll them literally) and set to work slicing up the miniature pink elephants. Thankfully for the network censors and some sense of decency, Eris had apparently been telling the truth when she had said that the pink elephants were reanimated zombie constructions. The part about the spiders was a complete and total lie. "Well, then," Grim said, wiping his scythe clean of stuffing and decaying elephant-bits, "That was fun."

"So what exactly are you up to, Eris?" Mandy directed at the goddess. "Are you sure you weren't trying to have another Happy Huggy Stuffy Bears moment?"

"Do these look like Happy Huggy Stuffy Bears to you?" Eris shot back. "For your information, this was left over from the last episode. After the Bandersnatch opened the gates of Valhalla, well...remember that taboo I mentioned?"

"Pardon me when I say I don't believe you...but I don't," Mandy pressed. "This is just your style to have events continue after the end of an episode."

"I beg your pardon," the goddess huffed, "but it is most certainly NOT my style. Even I have standards, you know. And taste." She kicked at one of the beheaded elephants. "What's going on, anyway? I'd rather like my boardroom in the shape it's usually in."

"You mean you don't know?" Grim asked her suspiciously.

"Know about what?"

"About the plot device, of course!" Grim said with a wave of his arms. Mandy put a hand to her face.

"Oh, is THAT what it is?" Eris said with an air of innocent curiosity that was completely faked. "Why, thanks for letting me know, Grimmy-poo. Now all I have to do is find this 'plot device'," she made air quotes with her fingers, "and reshape it to my own brand of chaos. I suppose it'll do as a replacement for the apple. If it's attractive."

Speaking of the apple which was now a peach, it had avoided narration for a while. So had Billy. The time had come to change this, as Billy discovered the golden peach, went "Oooooo", and promptly ate it.

Promptly afterwards, he turned into a rabbit. A six foot blue rabbit with a bald patch. "You know, that wasn't as tasty as I thought it would be," he said, grabbing at one of his oversized ears.

"Of course it isn't," Eris said in exasperation, "it's a _peach_."

"What should we do with him now?" Grim asked. "Although, perhaps we should take him home and let his mom see him _now_..."

Mandy shook her head. "He'll eat too much like that. Can't you change him into something less obnoxious?"

"I LIKE PIE," Billy declared. "I THOUGHT I'D REMIND YOU IN CASE YOU FORGOT."

"You're right, he _is_ obnoxious like that," Eris winced. "Not that he isn't normally. Oh, I have an idea!" She clapped her hands together, then pointed at Billy. From inside the rabbit's belly, the glowing shape of a peach became visible, and then Billy, who had started as a crab and was next a rabbit, was now a kitten.

"Now that's handy," Grim noted. "Think you can change him back?"

"That's too non-chaotic for my little apple, I'm afraid," she said. "But there are lots of other chaotic things we could try if you don't like kittens."

"Please do," Mandy said, "he's a hideous kitten." She wasn't kidding. Billy the kitten's nose was still huge, and he was now drooling on the carpet.

Eris "hmm"'d with a frown, then waved a hand again. Billy was now a giant robot. "Handy for crushing your enemies, right?"

"Handy for crushing your desk," Grim pointed out.

"Oh, drat, I forgot about that," Eris said, making a face. "Oh well, I was planning on having it replaced soon, anyway."

"01001001 01001100010010010100101101000101 00110011001011100011000100110100," Billy the robot declared cheerfully.

Eris considered again, and now Billy was a pony. "How about this?"

"Ugh," Mandy made a face, "now he smells even worse than before. Can't you think of anything better?"

"Well, I thought it was cute," Eris said with a shrug. "How about a sea slug?"

Zap. Billy was now a sea slug.

Grim shook his head. "Too difficult to transport around."

Billy made some blubbing sounds. "You could make him a toad," Grim suggested. "Toads are classic."

"See, Grim, this is why you have no taste," Eris said. "I suppose next you were going to suggest a rat?"

"...they're classic!"

"What about a very small rock?"

Now Billy was a very small rock, red in color. "We'd probably end up stubbing our toes on him," Grim pointed out.

"Then how about an ass?" And now Billy was a donkey.

Mandy shook her head. "It would never make it past the censors."

"Ha! Take that!" the author yelled in the general direction of Williams Street.

"Well, we'll just make him a unicorn," Eris suggested. "We'll put a horn on him."

"You can't make a unicorn out of an ass by putting a horn on him," Grim protested. "Everyone knows that's an assicorn."

"Hee-haw," Billy declared, which was most likely another iteration on his continual fondness for certain fruit-filled and baked desserts.

"Psh, just watch," Eris said, waving her hand. A trumpet appeared on Billy's head. It was followed by an obligatory rimshot and laugh track in the background.

"That's not a unicorn," Grim complained. "Now he's just a bad jazz player."

Mandy gave him a look. "You're not funny."

Eris considered again, scowling at Billy the assicorn, then snapped her fingers. Billy was now back to normal...well, mostly. His head was completely gone, but the rest of him seemed fine. "There," Eris said with pride. "I think you'll all agree it's a vast improvement."

"..." said Billy without a head, since he had no mouth. Failing this, he began to wave his arms frantically in patterns, hoping to get his point across.

"Why, Eris," Grim said, "I do believe that's the nicest thing you've ever done for me."

"You're right," she said after a moment, "we can't have that."

She waved a hand, and Billy was once again an assicorn, but this time with a voice. "I LIKE GRASS," he declared, then paused. "Wait, that's not quite right."

Grim scowled at Eris. "Well, toodle-oo, Grimmy boy," she said cheerfully, "I've got a plot device to find!" With that, she ducked into a hole in space and time that had not been there previously, closing it behind her.

"Should we go after her?" Mandy asked in a rhetorical tone.

"Eh," Grim said with a wave of his hand. "She'll have enough of a hard time finding her way out of that pit of rabid were-ducks."

"How do you know she's going to end up in a pit of rabid were-ducks?" Mandy wanted to know.

"Have you forgotten what my grandmama said?" Grim asked.

"It was a few thousand words ago," Billy said.

"Your attention span doesn't last for a few hundred," the reaper pointed out sourly.

"What were we talking about? I forgot."

Grim let out a sigh before turning to Mandy. "It's the Rule of Funny. It'll happen because it's funny."

"Will it be funny because Eris is getting what's coming to her, or because were-ducks are inherently funny?"

"Either suits my purpose. Come on, let's go home and plan our next move," Grim said. "Plus, we have to feed our new assicorn."

"I LIKE ALFALFA," Billy declared with a toot of the horn on his head. "No, that one's close, but not quite right. Hm..."

Somewhere, Eris emerged from the hole in space and time, only to find herself in a pit of rabid were-ducks. "Oh, bother," she sighed, "it had to be ducks again."


	2. Chapter 2

"Guaranteed 100% LOLcat free. ...Except for the tagline. No can has."

Billy's mother sometimes where she had gone wrong in life. She had never had any extravagant wants or needs, not like the weirdo next door who had a kink for mummies. She had just wanted an ordinary husband with an ordinary job and two-point-five ordinary kids growing up in an ordinary neighborhood. (A name wouldn't have been bad either, but no sense in being too greedy.) Now look at what her life had come to. Through some chain of events she wasn't sure of, the Grim Reaper had taken up residence in her house, bringing all sorts of hellish creatures and supernatural terrors with him, destroying the ordinary in her son, her house, her neighborhood, her life, and her sanity. She didn't think she could take much more of this. She was getting migraines from the stress, wrinkles around her eyes, and my god, was that a wart? It just couldn't possibly get any worse. That was what she was telling herself as she entered the kitchen and spotted Grim and his grandmother.

"Oh, hello dearie," Grim's grandmother greeted, "you're just in time for breakfast. Here, eat it while it's hot!" She passed over a bowl which had something full of eyes and tentacles in a bubbling, putrid broth which was enough to make Billy's mom turn green. With a shriek, she ran from the room.

"What was that about?" Grim's grandmother asked.

"Don't mind her," Grim said, "she only shows up about once an episode. Oh, I've missed your cooking, Grandmama!"

"Aww, Grimmy, you're too sweet."

Billy's mom made her way to the living room, where her husband and Billy the assicorn were sitting on the couch. Both had equally slack-jawed expressions as they watched television, although one was an ass with a trumpet on his head and the other was only an ass metaphorically. "Billy," his mom called. "would you like some pie?"

"No thanks, mom," he told her with a wave of a hoof. "That tagline's older than Grim's grandmother. I'm trying to stay hip and trendy."

"Oh, I see," she said slowly, feeling her eye beginning to twitch. "What's your new tagline, then?"

"I LIKE," he began, then paused. "Actually, that part might be getting old, too. Hey Grim! I need a new tagline!"

Grim poked his head out of the kitchen. "How about 'Watashi wa orokana assicorn'?"

"That's too hard to say," Billy complained.

"Drat," Grim muttered. "I was this close to getting him to admit he's an idiot continually."

"How about 'I'm obnoxious!'?" Grim's grandmother suggested. "Grimmy used to love that when he was little!"

"Grandmama!"

"I'M OBNOXIOUS," Billy shouted out, adding a bray to the end. "I likes it!"

Billy's mom was at her wit's end. She didn't think she could take any more of it. If one more abnormal person showed up... Just then, the doorbell rang. Storming over, she flung the door open, glaring at whoever happened to be on the doorstep.

The whoever that happened to be on the doorstep was none other than Irwin, since he was due to show up pretty soon. "Uh, hi, Billy's mom," he greeted, withering at the look she gave him.

Billy's mom slammed the door in his face, then whirled around and stomped all the way across the living room as her assicorn son and husband watched in silence. "I've got just the thing for you," Grim's grandmother suggested, offering up a bottle. "How about some good old-fashioned Jamacian spirits?"

The bottle was snatched in a snappy motion, and Billy's mother proceeded to chug the whole bottle before offering it back with the same sharp movement. After Grim's grandmother took the bottle back, she proceeded to storm up the stairs. "Honestly," Grim complained as the door slammed upstairs, "she really should be more welcoming to guests."

"Um," came Irwin's voice from outside. "Can I still come in?"

Billy the assicorn went to open the door, and swiftly discovered he was thwarted by the lack of opposable thumbs. Failing to turn the knob, he opted for kicking the door down. "Irwin?" he called as he stepped outside onto the downed door. "HEY IRWIN!"

"Down here," came a muffled voice from under the door.

"I don't see you," Billy said in confusion, looking around. "Did you turn invisible?"

"NO," Irwin groaned in pain. "I'm under the door!"

"Your mother's a bore?" Billy echoed in confusion.

"No! I'm underneath the door!"

"Whoa, your summer wreath's all tore?"

"NO! I am UNDER the DOOR, YO!"

"Lo, your-"

Grim cut Billy off by punting him off the door, lifting it up to reveal a mostly two-dimensional Irwin. "Thanks, Grim," he managed, fluttering out from underneath the door. "Dude, Billy, what happened? Is this another part of that thing with the brainworms?"

"Nah, I got rid of those," Billy said, sitting down on the grass.

"What brings you by, Irwin?" Grim asked as the short boy reinflated himself to a three-dimensional shape.

"Well, actually, I was wondering if you'd seen Mandy," Irwin said. "You see, I wrote her a poem, and-Where's my poem?" He began fumbling through his pockets for the poem.

Unfortunately for him, Mandy was standing right behind him with a piece of paper in her hand. She recited:

"Oh beautiful, noble Mandy,  
My solemn love and life's devout,  
Thy gentle, caring spirit  
What in the world, a turnip man  
To be continued."

Mandy and Grim both stared at him for several long, awkward seconds. "...It's a work in progress," Irwin admitted.

"Progress this," Mandy told him as she proceeded to shove it down his throat.

Grim sighed as he watched Mandy's hands make impressions on the inside of Irwin's throat. "Look, this is all well and good, but we don't really have the time to play around. We have to find the plot device, remember?"

"A plot device?" Irwin echoed. "What's that?"

"Nothing you need concern yourself with," Grim told him. "It's only the thing that controls our reality and all."

"It controls our reality?" Irwin thought about that, his imagination drifting into a world where he was considered cool and Mandy was madly in love with him. If he could control reality...

Mandy pulled out a giant pin and popped his dream bubble. "Whatever gross and disgusting thoughts you were thinking, forget it."

"Aww, Mandy, you always think the best of me." He turned to Grim. "Can't I help? I could call up Hoss, he's good at finding stuff and-"

"Forget it," Grim stated. "This party of three is all we need. Honestly, we don't even need that much," he added, glancing to Billy.

"I'M OBNOXIOUS," Billy shouted.

"So there will be no more additions to this little party," Grim stated firmly, "and that's that."

"Aww! Why not, yo?"

"Because we're the main characters and you're not."

Abruptly, there was a crack of thunder that smelled faintly of hot dogs and soggy cereal, and then Eris appeared, waving a hand in front of her face. "Ugh! What smells like hot dogs and soggy cereal?"

"Um, I think it's you," Grim said.

"Well, never mind then. I hope you're happy, Grimmy. The were-ducks were a mess. And the smell!"

He shrugged. "I just call them like I see them."

She scowled. "Any way, since I can't seem to make headway without running into this 'rule of funny'," she made air quotes with her fingers, "I'm forced to enlist your help in finding this 'plot device'."

"Stop using your fingers to do air quotes," he said. "It's annoying me."

"Ah, I see the balance of power has shifted my way," she purred.

"Look, I just got done telling another minor character we're not accepting additions. I'm most certainly not making an exception for you, Eris. This story is about the main characters."

"And I'm telling you to let me come with you, or I'm finding a more obnoxious form for Billy," she said sweetly. "Did you forget that he ate my apple?"

"Mandy, I've had a change of heart," Grim told the girl. "I think Eris would be a great asset to the team. Just this once."

"Uh-huh."

"Hey! If she gets to go then so do I!" Irwin protested.

"Forget it," Grim told him. "Unlike her, you can't make yourself useful."

"Well...I can strap a beater to my hand! How about THAT!"

"Please tell me you're kidding," Eris told him.

"Well, we could always use him to test rooms for gigantic Martian wolverines," Mandy pointed out.

"Yes! See? Mandy thinks I'm useful."

"Only in that you're a sack of edible flesh," Grim pointed out.

"I'll take what I can get, yo!"

"So, where do we start looking?" Eris asked. "There's an endless amount of possibilities."

"I think we should start with places we're familiar with," Grim said. "If we're going to find something, chances are it's in a place we've been before."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because that way they can recycle the backgrounds," Grim said. "Let's start with the school. It's got a lot of ground to cover. Eris and I will look around the outside of the building. Mandy, you, Billy and Irwin look around the rooms inside."

"Wow," Billy said as he listened to the snarls and screams inside the room. "What are the chances that we'd have ANOTHER room full of gigantic Martian wolverines?"

"Hm," Mandy looked around, "still no plot device. Did we try Sperg's lockers?"

"Do we have to?"

"Well, well, well," came a voice from nearby. "If it isn't the dork trio. What are you dorks up to? Doing dorky things in a dorky fashion, I imagine?"

"Oh, hey," Billy said as he saw the preppy girl standing in front of them, looking glorious in all her snobbery. "You're...who are you again?"

"Oh, come on, we're in the same class!" the girl shouted. "I'm-" The rest of what she was saying was drowned out in the sudden klaxons of a UFO battle overhead.

A long pause. "I know!" Irwin shouted, staggering out from the room of gigantic Martian wolverines. "Let's look it up on Wikipedia."

They looked at each other, shrugged, then Irwin pulled out a laptop, Billy the assicorn and Mandy looking over his shoulders. "This page needs cleaning up," Billy read.

"Is that really the best picture of me they could find?" Mandy asked, staring at the page.

"Wow!" Billy exclaimed. "My mom has a name?"

"Do I really say 'yo' that much?" Irwin wondered.

"Yeah. You kind of do."

"Hey!" the preppy girl without a name shouted at them. "You're not listening to me! And you, narrator, I DO have a name, you nerd! It's-" This time, she was conveniently drowned out by a stampede of buffalo through the school hallway that miraculously trampled only her. The lesson, kids, is to not call your narrator names. :)

Irwin twitched from where he had also been run over by the buffalo. "How come I was hit too, yo?!"

The narrator shrugged its gender-neutral, invisible shoulders. Irwin did seem like an easy target.

"Hey, I don't see her on this list," Billy pointed out. "Maybe she's AN IMPOSTOR!"

"What? I am not, I go to class with you, you dweeb! My name is-" Oh, look, what an ill-timed practice note for the marching band.

"Maybe she's from that show that never got off the ground," Mandy said.

"Hey!" Skarr popped in long enough to protest. "There's nothing wrong with a little evil!"

"Go back to your own show!" Billy told him, giving him a swift kick in the rear.

"Oh, wait, there she is." Mandy pointed. "At the bottom of the page."

"I'm at the bottom?!" she questioned, aghast.

"Mindy," Irwin read aloud. "A girl who attends school with Billy and Mandy. She thinks she's hot stuff but she's really not. Secretly, she likes hanging out with nerds and doing strange things with manatees." Irwin looked at Mindy in a new light. "_Really_?"

"It's all lies!" Mindy protested. "Who wrote that?"

Somewhere, the narrator chuckled wickedly and went off to vandalize the page for Adult swim.

"Now that that pointless exercise is out of the way," Mandy said, tossing the laptop over a shoulder and hitting the cat from Chapter 1 with it, "what do you want, Mindy? We don't have time to pander to your need for attention today."

"And what is so important that it could be more important than _me_, hm?" Mindy wanted to know. She was then struck by lightning for no apparent reason.

"Oooo," Billy said in awe. "Do that again!"

Obligingly, the lightning struck twice.

"Remind me not to piss off the narrator, yo," Irwin whispered to Mandy.

"Let's get going," Mandy said to the boy and the assicorn. "We have a plot device to find."

"Oh, a plot device?" Mindy commented. "That's not so much. My dad's got three of them."

"I'm sure he does."

'What if she's telling the truth?" Irwin pointed out. "We could go ahead and return everything to normal right now."

"You dolt," Mandy told him, "it's only chapter two. That's far too early to find a plot device."

"It's okay if you're jealous," Mindy said. "I can understand. After all, I imagine everyone must want something so plotty and so device-y. I bet you'd feel pretty lucky if I gave you one, huh?"

"Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!" Billy agreed, nodding his head in rapid succession.

"What's the catch?" Mandy questioned suspiciously.

"Oh, it's nothing too serious," Mindy remarked with a casual air. "You just have to beat me at a little contest, that's all."

Mandy narrowed her eyes. "What kind of contest."

"The only kind of contest that can happen between two women, of course," Mindy declared. "A war of love!"

"A war of love?" Irwin and Billy the assicorn echoed.

"That's right, boys. Now, this is our target," and she pointed down the hallway, where Sperg was attempting to stuff Pudd'n into a locker.

"We're going to make Pudd'n fall in love with us?" Mandy echoed.

"Of course not, that'd be too easy," Mindy snorted. "We're going to make Sperg fall in love with us."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Billy declared, looking a little green.

"Don't do it, yo!" Irwin shouted. "Think of our future together!"

"The first one to get Sperg to buy them a candy bar wins," Mindy told Mandy. "Well, are you up for it? Or are you going to chicken out?"

"I never back down from a fight," Mandy replied, staring Mindy straight in the eyes. "And I never lose."

"There's a first time for everything," Mindy shot back.

"Oh, I can't bear to watch," Irwin groaned, burying his face in the nearest object-another gigantic Martian wolverine. His screams faded into the background as Billy followed the girls.

"Mandy, it's not too late," Billy told her. "I'll distract him while you run."

Mandy gave him a deadly look in response. "I don't run away, Billy. Not from anything. Fear is not a word in my vocabulary."

"But what about the ice skaters?"

"We've been over that, all right? I just don't trust the way they spin, that's all."

Sperg laughed to himself as he walked away from the locker, tossing up a few coins of pilfered lunch money. "Ladies first, so I guess that means me," Mindy said to Mandy as she strolled up to Sperg. "Heya, big boy."

"Huh?" Sperg looked over at her.

She leaned against a locker, batting her eyes in what might be assumed to be an attempt at a seductive manner. "You're looking good today. I just love a man who can stuff another man into a locker."

Mandy rolled her eyes. "Well, I have had a lot of practice," Sperg declared. "...hey, why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?"

"Because I can't stop thinking about you and all your big, strong muscles," Mindy purred. "I think we need to get to know each other a little better. How about you, me, and a candy bar? Pretty please?"

"Ha!" Sperg said in derision, shoving her away. "Get lost."

"Why you-" Mindy decided now was the time to switch gears. "I'll give you a hundred bucks to buy me a candy bar."

"Hey! That's cheating!" Billy protested. "Mandy, do something, quick!"

"I'm on it." Walking over, she made eye contact with Sperg. "All right, musclebrain. You. Candy bar. For me. Now."

"Oh yeah? And what will you give me for it?"

She yanked him down by the shirt, pulling his face close to hers and readying a fist. "All of your teeth still in your mouth."

"That sounds like an excellent reward," Sperg whimpered, running off to the vending machine and quickly returning with the candy bar, which he offered her on bent knee.

Mindy looked ready to step in with a scheme to score the candy bar first, but unfortunately for the darling, sweet princess, she was struck by lightning again. "Seriously?!" she protested. "We're inside!"

Mandy accepted the candy bar. "Now get lost," she ordered Sperg, who disappeared in a hurry. Taking a celebratory bite of the chocolate, she turned back to Mindy. "It's my victory. Cough up the plot device."

"You can't make me!" Mindy protested.

"Wanna take a bet on that?"

A few minutes and a wipe transition later, the three were at Mindy's princess cabana, which was a small part of the large estate where Mindy and her family lived. "It's in this box," she said, opening it up.

"Ooooo," Billy said as she opened it, the three peering in.

Peering back at them was a very small man, perhaps a foot tall, glaring at them. "What do you lot want? You're breathing my air. I demand that you stop that at once! It's _my_ air and you have to listen to me because I won't stop arguing til you do."

"Somehow, I find myself vastly disappointed," Billy the assicorn said.

"I can see why she keeps him in a box," Irwin observed.

"You two are perfect for each other," Mandy told Mindy. "Where's the real plot device?"

"This is a plot device," she insisted. "His name is Eric. Isn't he cute?"

"Shut up, you worthless waste of ink and cels," the small man directed at Mindy. "Have you done everything I told you to do? My shoes are not shined, my food has not been spoon-fed to me, and my-" Billy brayed. "-is not wiped!"

"Oh hey, I know what that is," Irwin realized. "It's an Inchworm."

"An Inchworm?" Mandy echoed.

"Yeah. They're very small people that are known for having small...well...you know."

"I know!" Billy yelled. "They have small tracts of land."

Irwin gave him a confused look. "Um...yeah, sure. Anyway, they have really low self-esteem, so they exist by putting down others. Their weakness is not getting what they want."

"Hey! Didn't I tell you to stop breathing my air?" Eric the Inchworm shouted at them as he crawled out of his box, glaring at them impotently. "Do as I say right now, or-"

Billy promptly stomped on the small, pathetic little man, grinding him into the ground with a hoof. "Ahhh," he said, planting his butt down on the ground Inchworm. "That felt good."

Mandy turned back to Mindy. "So cough up the plot device already."

"Please take him," Mindy begged. "Daddy got him for me but he's just so icky. And he never shuts up."

"No thanks. I already have one of those."

"I'M OBNOXIOUS!"

"Yes, Billy," Mandy said with a glare toward the assicorn, "we know. So do you have an actual plot device, Mindy?"

"No, who would want one of those?" she said with a wave of her hand. "They're so last season. I just said that so you'd take the Inchworm."

"Stop talking about me," Eric gasped from under Billy's hoof, "as if I'm not here."

"Billy?" Mandy said to her companion.

He gleefully stomped around, doing a little tapdance on top of the Inchworm. "Ta-da!"

"I'm...going to tell my boss," the Inchworm groaned. "And he'll yell at you."

"That only gets you anywhere if your boss is as tiny of a man as you," Mandy informed him.

"And if he is, I GET TO STEP ON HIM!" Billy shouted gleefully, doing another tapdance on top of Eric.

"Here you kids are," Grim said, appearing on the scene with Eris in tow. "What have you been up to? We couldn't find you at the school."

The woman was being followed by a trail of hedgehogs which were all staring at her adoringly. "I said get," she said, making shooing motions. "I'm not the hedgehog queen you're looking for."

"Thought we found it, but it was a false alarm," Mandy said. "It's about time we tried somewhere else. Where's next on the list, Grim?"

"Well, if we're to get anywhere...I guess we'd better try the Underworld next."


	3. Chapter 3

"Well, it's better than that Legolas/Mark Hamill fic you were going to read, isn't it?"

After a hearty breakfast from Grim's grandmother, largely consisting of something wiggling and with too many legs to count, Grim felt ready to set off to the underworld, with girl, assicorn, and goddess in tow. "I thought you were making a cameo," Grim grumbled as he looked at Eris while pulling out his scythe.

Eris looked back at him, grinned, then pointed at Billy. Billy then turned into an enormous green ape, letting out a bellow of rage. Turning him back into an assicorn, she smirked, and said nothing. "Fine, fine," Grim grumbled. "As long as we don't end up hauling your boyfriend along."

"Oh, we broke up ages ago," Eris said with a wave of her hand. "Though I wouldn't be surprised to see him show up. He does pop up in the most unusual places."

"Lucky for us normal humans can't typically reach the Underworld."

"Oh, he's hardly _normal_, but your security isn't as good as you think."

"Oh, yeah? What makes you say that?" Grim entered the portal, then nearly stumbled over Irwin, who looked lost and terrified.

"Grim!" he cried joyously, then paused. "You know, I really shouldn't be so happy to see the Grim Reaper at this stage in my life."

"Oh, shut up, Irwin," Grim grumbled, glaring at Eris. "Somehow, I know this is your fault."

"What are you doing here, Irwin?" Billy asked, trotting over to him.

"I really don't know, yo," the short boy groaned. "Last thing I remember was these rabbits with nasty, sharp pointy teeth, and..."

"Never mind. I don't think we really want to know," Mandy interrupted.

"Where should we go first, Grim?" Billy asked, walking around. As he did so, one of his hooves began to squeak.

"What's that horrendous noise?" Eris made a face.

Billy paused, then looked down at his hoof. Underneath was Eric the Inchworm, squeaking in protest as Billy put his hoof down. "Ewwwww," Billy said, shaking his hoof to try and get the small man off.

"Why did you bring that with you?" Mandy asked with a frown. "It's not edible, just so you know."

"I dunno. I guess the gag hadn't gotten old yet." Billy peered at the little man.

"Going to...sue you," Eric the Inchworm wheezed.

"Good grief. Are we going to be expanding the cast every chapter?" Grim gave the Inchworm a poke with his scythe.

Billy stomped on Eric a few times, immediately becoming amused with the squeaking. Laughing with glee, he continued to stomp Eric to a pulp.

"Look, Irwin," Mandy said, pointing to Eric. "It's one of the few things in the universe that's more pathetic than you are."

"Awesome, yo!" Irwin's day had been made.

Since nothing was happening, production decided to step up the action a bit. In the middle of the room, for no reason whatsoever, a blue cow exploded.

"Where did THAT come from?" Mandy said, wiping cow gunk off her dress. Her words were cut off by a low rumble that echoed through the large cavern they were in.

"Grim?" Billy questioned, pausing in his squeaking of Eric. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Oh, crud," Grim said. "It's a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster. And since we're covered in blue cow, it probably thinks _we're_ food."

"It's a _what_?" Mandy said, eyes getting wide as a large shadow fell across them.

"Like I said, it's a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster. And since-"

"I got that part! Why do you have something that only eats blue cows in the Underworld?"

"Well, believe it or not, we did have a population control issue-"

"Uh, guys," Irwin interrupted, legs shaking. "I don't think this is really the time to discuss this, yo!"

"Every goddess for herself!" Eris declared as the group began to run.

"Huh? Where's everyone going?" Billy asked, just before teeth descended down on him, swallowing assicorn and Inchworm whole.

"Should we do something?" Grim asked.

"You wanna be eaten?"

"Actually, hold on," Eris said, skidding to a stop. "This gives me an idea." Turning around and pointing at the blue cow eating snicker-snack monster, the faint glow of the peach was visible inside its stomach before Billy was turned into a giant overweight chicken, spreading blue cow eating snicker-snack monster bits everywhere.

"Oooo," Billy the oversized chicken said, flapping his impossibly tiny wings. "I CAN FLY!"

"Great," Mandy observed, wiping more gunk off her dress. "Now I'm covered in _two_ types of unidentifiable animal bits. Thanks, Eris."

"Next time, I'll let it eat you first," Eris said with a toss of her hair as she reverted Billy back to normal-well, as normal as being a donkey with a horn on one's head got.

"Aww. No flying," Billy protested.

The conversation was interrupted by a high-pitched shrieking that filled the cave. "Oh, great. Just what we needed," Grim grumbled. "It's a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink."

Mandy looked over at him. "You have _got_ to be kidding."

"Well, you see, when the blue cow eating snicker-snack monsters got out of control..."

"Forget the ecology lesson," Eris shouted. "Run for it!"

The group ran as if they were in a Scooby Doo episode, the ground shaking with each footstep of the blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink's footsteps. They ran in a door, and emerged out a door some ways up the hall, then in and out through several more. They raced up spiral staircases that appeared out of nowhere, and then back down them when oversized, clawed bird feet appeared at the top of said stairs. They ran away on multi-person bikes, on scooter chairs, on a cruise ship and on a gigantic missile. They ran through vivid and sloppy backgrounds that had probably been done by the interns during happy hour. And as the chase scene rolled on, the characters sat down in the front row, watching the continued animation.

"I've never understood the appeal of these things," Grim commented, munching on some candy. "It's like an opportunity to show off strange animation, but nothing actually happens."

"Needs more explosions," Billy said around a mouthful of popcorn.

"I thought the Teen Titans did it better, to be honest," Eris said. "At least there was a rationale there."

"Is my butt really that big, yo?"

A high-pitched shriek from behind them made them all look up. Oversized, clawed bird feet were perched a few rows behind them. With a look of panicked expressions that would have made the Looney Tunes proud, they tore out of the theater, bird feet following with loud thumps, and the chase was on again.

"I don't know about you, but I'm seriously tired of the chase scenes," Eris complained.

"Psst! Over here!" came a voice, a small door opening in the wall. Without hesitation, the entire group dashed into the door. It shut behind them, sealing them in complete darkness. Outside, they could hear the scratching of the blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink as it tried to get in.

"Whew," Grim let out a sigh in the darkness. "Is everyone all right?"

Mandy blinked, looking around as she checked herself. "I think so."

"Whoa, cool!" Irwin exclaimed. "Your eyes are doing that glowy thing in the dark! I thought only the really long running cartoons and movies got that!"

The narrowed pair of eyes looked at the large ones, and then there was the sound of a poke, followed by Irwin's eyes closing with an "Ow!"

"Nonsense aside," Eris's glowy eyes asked, "Where are we? And who saved us?"

"That would be me," came a voice as another pair of eyes joined them. This pair was glowing green instead of white like all the other pairs of eyes.

"Nergal!" Grim said, lighting a match so the interns had something more visual to work on. "I should have known."

The black creature of the underworld gave him a blank look. "You should have known? Why? Did I do something wrong? You know I'm not very good with these rescue things, Grim old boy."

"What are you doing here, Uncle Nergal?" Billy asked.

"Well, I was just tending to my blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink, and I heard some noise, and to my surprise there you all were!" Nergal said, spreading his hands wide. "It's so good to see you all! I haven't seen you since last season, I think."

"You were tending a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink?" Mandy asked in disbelief.

"Yes, isn't she cute? I call her Joe. So, what brings you to my little neighborhood?" Nergal asked.

"We're looking for a plot device," Eris told him. "If you've got one, cough it up."

Nergal considered that. "No, can't say that I do. But enough about that, let me invite you to dinner! Come on, everyone's invited," he said, giving Eris a push offscreen.

"Nergal, we really don't have the time," Grim said. "We need to find this plot device before something bad happens-and stays that way."

"Nonsense, there's always time for a nice family dinner! Besides, I can ask my son! You remember Nergal Jr., right kids?" he addressed to Mandy and Irwin. "He's just getting to that age where he's beginning to control and enslave the dead. Boys will be boys!"

"I dread my afterlife," Irwin whimpered.

"Aren't you just going to be wrapped up and stuffed in a giant tomb?" Mandy asked.

"Yeah...I'm not really sure which is worse."

Nergal led the way, chattering merrily to anyone that would listen. Grim and Eris weren't paying enough attention, so he ended up by Billy. "I must say, Billy, I think you've seen better days. Does that horn hurt?"

"Only when I blow too much." Billy gave the horn on his head a toot. "How have you been, Uncle Nergal? How's my Aunt Sis?"

"Wonderful," he sighed, "we're as happy as the day we first met. Every day is another chapter in the book of blissful matrimony! What better way to come home from a hard day of work torturing and terrorizing residents of the Underworld and have a hot meal and a loving wife ready to feed me and ask me how my day was? It's not an easy job, you know. I just hope Nergal Jr. can take over when he's old enough."

Billy nodded with rapt attention, a trailing thought cloud indicating he was thinking about chocolate. "And here we are," Nergal said, opening the door to his house. "Honey, I'm home!"

"Welcome back," Aunt Sis greeted, stepping out of the kitchen as she wiped her hands on a dish towel. "Oh, you've brought Billy by for dinner. Hello, Billy."

"Hi, Aunt Sis," he greeted, taking a seat on the couch. "What's happening?"

"Oh, just the usual. Dear," she addressed to Nergal, "those imps are getting into the ventilation systems again. Did you ask your friend about it?"

"Oh! Curse it all, I forgot. I'm sorry, dear," he apologized, taking her hands. "I just ran into some old friends, and I had to bring them by. I'll definitely take care of that tomorrow."

"Hello, Mandy, Grim," she greeted. "Who are your friends?"

"Um, I'm Irwin, yo," the short boy spoke up. "Don't you remember me?"

"Oh, have we met? I'm so sorry, dear," Aunt Sis apologized. "Ever since that problem we had with the ghoulfiends, I'm afraid my memory and personality have been out of sorts."

"In other words," Mandy addressed the audience, "the author doesn't remember the episode where she showed up."

"In any case, sit down for a spell. Nergal Jr," she called up the stairs. "Come down and say hi to your father's friends."

The boy came down the stairs, stopping cold as he saw the group. "What are you guys doing here?"

"Hi, cuz," Billy said, waving a hoof. "What's the word on the down low?"

Nergal frowned. "Why is Billy an assicorn?"

"He's _not_ an assicorn," Grim said in exasperation. "You can't just stick a trumpet on an ass and think it'll work. That just gets you a high school marching band."

Nergal looked from Grim to Mandy. "It's a long story," she said. "If you're really interested, I'll pass you the script later."

"We have a script?" Grim asked. "I doubt that."

"Oh, son!" Nergal greeted, giving the boy a hug. "I'm home, did you miss me?"

"I...suppose so?"

"Your dad says you've been working on controlling the dead," Mandy addressed to Nergal Jr..

"Yeah...I've been texting them." He held up a phone.

"You can text message the dead?" Mandy asked, raising an eyebrow.

"We get great reception down here," Nergal told her, "as long as you're not trying to go with one of those wimpy phone places."

"Oh, what do you use?" Grim asked. "I've been thinking about switching providers."

"Attila the Phone. You never have to _hun_t for a tower!"

"...That's a terrible, terrible waste of an Attila the Hun joke." Mandy shook her head. "How's the texting working out, Nergal Jr?"

"Well, it's more comfortable than enslaving them face to face," Nergal Jr explained. "It avoids all that awkward social tension."

"That's what's wrong with the youth of America today," Billy complained, kicking up his hooves and flinging Eric the Inchworm across the room, where he was promptly snagged and abducted by the ventilation system imps. "No one is accustomed to talking face to face anymore."

"I kind of like it, yo," Irwin protested. "Nobody can beat you up by text."

Meanwhile, at the school, Sperg was desperately trying to find a way. "Bullies have to expand their social networking too, you know," he addressed the audience. "I don't want to get left behind by these newer, trendier bullies."

Back in the underworld, Nergal had gathered the group around a table magically large enough for all of them, including assicorn. Eric the Inchworm was still in the ventilation system, currently being used as a pinata for the ventilation system imps. "Ah, it's so nice to have a group together for dinner," Nergal said with a smile. "I never seem to be able to get any of my coworkers to come home for a bite."

"That's because you're a fiend of the underworld who tortures undead," Mandy pointed out. "Also, you're obnoxious."

"Oh, Mandy, I'm glad we became friends. You always know the right things to say."

"Hey, don't be making moves on my girl, yo!" Irwin said as Mandy put a hand to her face. "You're a married man!" Mandy turned around and stabbed him with her fork, making him squeal and run around in panicked agony.

"You know," she said, resting her head on a hand and looking decidedly unimpressed, "For a guy that's half mummy and a quarter vampire, you shouldn't be as much of a weenie as you are."

"Don't talk smack about my mama, yo," Irwin said, screeching to a stop. "She's a gangsta wrapper, you know."

"What's she going to do? Pun me to death?"

"Now, now, children," Nergal said, raising a hand. "Let's leave all of that animosity behind, shall we? This is a nice, pleasant dinner."

"Have you ever met these kids before?" Grim said, giving Nergal a look. "They're not capable of a nice, pleasant dinner. Every time they sit down for a nice, pleasant dinner, something goes wrong."

"I had a nice pleasant dinner once," Billy spoke up. "It was with the guy that ran the genius school!"

Nergal Jr. looked at Billy in surprise. "That place must have really low standards of 'genius'."

"They accepted me! But I decided I would rather stay with my friends," Billy said. "Plus, my name is in the title, so I can't go anywhere." Having said that, Billy went back to the problem of figuring out how to drink his soup without the use of opposable thumbs, and finally settled for throwing his face into the bowl.

"See? We can't even keep a conversation on track," Grim said. "As I was saying, every time we attempt at some mild, sitcom funny at a dinner table, it always gets ruined."

"What makes you say that?" Nergal asked.

From outside there was the roar of an engine, and barely a split second later a giant truck had come roaring in through the wall, coming to a halt on the dining room table. Eric the Inchworm, who had just gotten away from the ventilation system imps, just happened to be under where one of the tires would stop when it did stop. "Why me?" he complained. "Is there a vendetta against me or something?" Evil laughter from above confirmed that suspicion.

Out of the truck's window, Hoss Delgado looked out, hand currently in the shape of a rocket launcher which he pointed around. "Sorry for the intrusion, folks," he said in his low voice, "No need to panic. I'm just here for the blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink."

"You want my blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink?" Nergal echoed, blinking. "What do you want with Lisa?"

"I thought her name was Joe," Mandy said.

"Sometimes she feels like a Lisa."

"Let's just say," Hoss Delgado cocked his hand rocket launcher, "she and I have a date. With destiny."

"See, this is just one of the many reasons we broke up," Eris said to Grim, resting her chin in one hand. "Suave just isn't in his vocabulary. But corny is, apparently."

Nergal frowned at Hoss. "I appreciate the thought, but Lisa isn't really the type that appreciates the attention. She tends to get a little tempermental. Why don't you join us for dinner instead?"

Hoss opened his mouth to say something, and was interrupted by a classic stomach rumble. A few minutes later the car had been backed through the hole in the wall. Once again, everyone had gathered around the now-flattened table, all continuing their meals. "So Mr. Delgado," Irwin addressed him, "I've been practicing everything you taught me. Want to see my beater?"

"Huh? Oh, that's very good, kid," Hoss agreed distractedly. "You keep right on pluggin' and you'll be beating monsters left and right before you know it."

"Well... right now all I can beat is cake," Irwin admitted. "But it makes the batter super thick and yummy!"

"Oh, that sounds nice," Aunt Sis spoke up, mostly so people would remember she was there. "We'll have to get together and make one sometime."

Hoss put down his bowl, slurping out the remainder of the soup. "Thank you for the meal, ma'am," he directed to Aunt Sis, "it was delicious. Reminds me of what my mother used to make when I was a kid. Now..." His hand turned back into the rocket launcher, and he cocked it again. "Time to go bag me a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink."

"I really must advise against that," Nergal spoke up. "They're very tempermental. And this place still smells a bit like blue cow eating snicker-snack monster. It might make her hungry."

"Then I'll just have to give Lisa an appetite for disaster," Hoss stated, rising from the table. Hopping back in his car, he revved across the living room, bursting out through the front door. The sound of an engine was heard outside, and was soon followed by the sound of a few launching rockets and accompanying explosions.

"This really isn't a good idea," Nergal said with a frown. "Do you even know what a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink is capable of doing?"

"Besides eating blue cow eating snicker-snack monsters?" Grim asked.

"And getting your tongue tied up in knots?" Billy added. "I wanna call her Joe again."

"Hey, a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polkadotted platydink is serious business," Nergal said, the scene switching to a simplistic drawing of a person next to a pair of clawed feet. "In addition to being tempermental enough to storm whole cities and level them when they're angry," the line drawings turned to a pair of chicken feet filled with unexplained rage, trampling a simplified skyline, "they get even worse if they lose some feathers. When a blue cow eating snicker-snack monster eating polka dotted platydink loses some feathers, they become so enraged that time and space itself can warp. People, events, things, everything can be thrown out of order, and often is. Why, it could be a disaster," Nergal concluded as the line drawing exploded in a burst of pixels.

"Well, then," Grim concluded, tucking his hands behind his head. "I expect it'll happen."

Mandy gave him a look. "How is a giant warp in space and time funny?"

"Some people will find anything funny," Grim said with a shrug. "You _do_ watch television, right?"

"I've got you now!" came Hoss's voice from outside, followed by an enraged, high-pitched shriek. "Wait, no I don't. Come back here, you slippery family loving potato!"

"The censors must be getting exasperated," Billy noted, finding Eric again and squeaking him a few times.

Just then, a few white feathers drifted through the door. "Oh, dear," Nergal said. "That's not good."

The next thing everyone knew, the world had blown up.


	4. Chapter 4

"And for my next trick, I'll come up with a dragon by changing the first letter to E."

"It was night. It was in a forest. It was quite dark out and badly littered with dimly painted backgrounds. There was a thin, scraggly tree in the foreground. I was dressed in something hideous that was not my normal outfit, and I wondered what the hell I was doing here. And more importantly, author, if you can be called that," Mandy continued, "I seriously doubt the opening paragraph you're attempting to parody had THAT many adjectives in it."

As Mandy had stated, it was night and she was in a forest. Imagine that. Somewhere, the howl of a wolf could be heard, possibly a werewolf and possibly just one of the non-werewolves that were trendy and hip. Mandy once again found herself wondering why she was wearing something that looked like it came out of a teen novel.

And then _it_ approached. Dressed down in a nondescript T-shirt and jeans, touched off with a leather jacket for the sexy highlight, was a vampire. You could tell he was a vampire because even in the moonlight, he was sparkling.

"Um, I don't think it worked like that. They sparkle in the daylight, dimwit."

Shut up. The author hasn't actually read Twilight, okay? This was a requested scene, and gosh darn it, you'll like it. Anyway, the vampire, who was indeed sparkling despite the fact it was night and shut up I am the author and what I say goes, approached Mandy with a dark, serious look in his eyes.

"Oh, _hell_ no," Mandy stated flatly, censors be damned.

"What?" the vampire protested, sparkling as if he were a supernatural craft table. "I haven't even said anything yet, darling."

"You're not going to say anything else if you insist on calling me darling," Mandy replied, clenching a fist and preparing to make good on the statement.

"Hey, whoa, wait, hold up, darling," the vampire protested. "Let's not be hasty or nothing, darling. I'm just here to play the scene, kay, darling?"

"You have about three seconds to do the following things," Mandy told him, yanking him down by his jacket. "One, tell me where the Grim Reaper and assicorn are. Two, stop saying 'darling'. And three..."

"Um, what's three?"

"I'd tell you, but I have to think of a way to get it past the censors." Mandy scowled, crossing her arms as she considered. It had to be the dress, she thought. It was making her feel stupider by the moment. Just as she thought this, she mysteriously tripped despite the fact that she hadn't been walking. "Whoa!"

The vampire caught her, smiling charmingly as he drew his face close to hers. "I do say, it looks like you've _fallen_ for me, darling."

His moderately punny pickup line got him a punch to the face as a reward. "Augh! My nose!" he yelped. "It's bleeding!"

"So drink it," Mandy said. "You _like_ blood."

"Ewwww," the vampire protested. "That's just unsanitary."

"Mandy!" came a joyous cry from nearby, and to her annoyance, it was not the Grim Reaper or Billy the assicorn, but Irwin, stumbling over as he joined her, tossing a cape over his shoulder. "I didn't know you were out this way, yo. Oh, wow, nice outfit!"

With a grimace, Mandy grabbed the dress and ripped it off, revealing her normal clothing underneath. "Irwin. How did you end up here? Last thing I remember, we were all separated."

"Oh, I came over here for a family reunion," Irwin explained. "On my dad's side. I see you've already met my cousin?"

"Well, more like her fist meeting my nose," the sparkling vampire grumbled.

"That's your cousin?" Mandy looked at the vampire. Despite the fact that he was dressed the right way and was indeed a pale, undead predator of the night, she could see the family resemblance. He had "dork" written all over him.

"My name's Reddy, darling," the vampire said, holding out a hand. "Pleased to meet you?"

"'Reddy'?" Mandy eyed him in disbelief.

"Yeah, um, my parents were sort of hippies, and..." Reddy began.

"Your parents were hippies? How does 'vampire hippies' even work?"

"It was the sixties, darling. There was a lot of strange stuff going on."

She considered, then punched him in the face again. "I said to stop calling me darling."

Reddy let out a 'gack' noise and fell back. "So, does he always sparkle like that? And do all your relatives do that?"

"Um... Reddy doesn't really like to talk about it, yo," Irwin said softly. "So let's not go there, okay?"

"Then the less said, the better."

"So, you wanna come see the family mansion?" he asked.

"Your family has a mansion?" She eyed him. "Then how come you live in the suburbs?"

"It's less of a commute. This is more like the vacation house, yo," Irwin explained as he led the way, only tripping over his cape occasionally. Mandy must have still been feeling the effects of the clothes, for she tripped over it a few times, too. "Dracula left it to us after he went to live with his friends in the nursing home. But since we're having a family reunion, he's back there. Aren't you glad, Mandy? You'll get to meet Dracula again."

"My heart spills forth with a vast and unending joy."

The path through the forest ran too long for more interesting exposition. By the time they had finally arrived, Mandy had converted Reddy to her own personal horse, complete with bit and making the sparkling vampire crawl on his hands and knees toward the mansion. "You know, it's a fair bit more modern than I expected," she commented to Irwin.

"My aunt and uncle took out a renovation loan on it a few months back," Irwin told her. "The rates were really good thanks to the economy crashing and all, yo. It was a pain finding a licensed contractor, though, and our loan officer was a piece of work."

"A piece of work?"

"Yeah, she seemed to think that everyone else should be doing her job, and when they didn't, well, we could hear the screaming from her office. When we found out our builder wasn't licensed and couldn't legally build, she kept trying to use him anyway, yo. It took a month just to close."

Mandy nodded, then paused, facing the audience again. "Okay, author, enough. This is really only funny to you."

"But it's true!" protested a voice from the heavens. "Loan officers suck."

Reddy whined as he spit out the bit, and Mandy yanked it back in. "Well, let's go in and I'll show you around," Irwin said, leading her inside.

The mansion had indeed been redone. Unlike most haunted mansions which were host to vampires and their kin, the place was well lit and clean, decorated tastefully in a more modern style of trim and furniture. Even the chandelier hanging from the ceiling was more sculpted and smooth, lit with a few lights instead of the traditional candles. "This is the first time Grandpa's seen it since it's been renovated, yo. I wonder what he's going to think about it."

"Uh, it's Dracula. What do you think he's going to think?"

"Dracula doesn't like none of this nonsense!" came a voice from a nearby room, and then the aged vampire stormed in, glaring at a flower-patterned couch. "Dracula didn't have this sort of trussed-up tomfoolery when Dracula was living here! This isn't a haunted mansion, it's a bat-loving day spa!"

"Come on, Dad," Irwin's dad's voice could be heard, trying to sound placating. "We have to stay up with the times, you know. The youth of today just can't connect with the relics of the past. We have to modernize. Hey, did you know we have wifi now?"

"Modernize nothing! Dracula wants things back to the way they were!" Dracula crossed his arms and planted his feet. "Dracula ain't going back til the house is fixed up proper like!"

"Come on, dad," Irwin's dad urged. "Just relax and have a good time. Look, it's your grandsons Irwin and Reddy," he said, gesturing to the short boy and sparking vampire, who had finally been allowed to stand again. "You remember them, right? Look how handsome Irwin's become. He even brought a girlfriend!"

Mandy took a step back. "I am not his girlfriend. That will get you killed."

"Hey, Dracula remembers you!" he said, pointing at Mandy. "You, uh...I remember you! It was someplace that we met at some time," he insisted. "Did I wrestle you in high school?"

"No, and that would be incredibly creepy."

"Interpretive dance, two semesters? Dracula was always in the back because Dracula's weak ankles."

"No. Now you think you're a Disney character."

"Dracula ain't no mamby-pansy Disney character!" the vampire shouted suddenly. "Off prancing through the woods if you please, saving princesses and fighting dragons! That ain't the way animation was done in Dracula's day! Dracula had REAL settings and REAL villains, and by gumbo, Dracula made those heroes shake in their boots before they staked Dracula!"

"How are you still alive if you've been staked?" Mandy questioned.

"Oh, it wasn't much but a flesh wound. You kids today have no idea how it was back in the old days. Why, Dracula was staked while walking to school the eighteen miles every morning, uphill both ways in the ashes of a nuclear winter!"

"...You know what? Let's forget this whole conversation ever happened. Talk to your sparkling grandson."

"Do you really have to bring up the sparkling?" Reddy whined. "It's not like I can help it, darling."

"Come on, Grandpa," Irwin urged, leading the elderly vampire into a nearby room. "Let's get you some nice, warm blood and let you sit down for a spell, okay?"

"Dracula don't want no warm blood! Back in his day, Dracula drank it cold and Dracula LIKED it!" Dracula shouted as he was led away.

That left Mandy, Reddy, and Irwin's dad. "It's so nice of you to come all the way out here," Irwin's dad said to Mandy. "I'm sure Irwin appreciates it, too."

"I'm sure he does," Mandy muttered. "I didn't mean to come out here. It just sort of happened."

"Well, all the same, sit down and have something to eat, okay?" Irwin's dad offered. "We've got plenty of goodies, including Grandmama's home-baked biscuits."

"Well... I suppose I could stand for a biscuit." Mandy relented, following Irwin's dad.

Reddy followed as well. "So I guess it's just you and m-" Mandy hit him again without turning around.

Irwin's dad entered the kitchen, opening the door cheerily. In there already was a werewolf, a huge creature, mostly huge in the gut. His ears went back as the group entered, and he slowly put down the bowl of leftover cookie batter he had been licking at. "Jakey!" Reddy said in surprise. "I didn't know you'd be here."

"Reddy!" Jakey greeted, running over to him on all fours and sitting in front of him like a dog, tail wagging. "You're looking well."

"I'm feeling much better now that you're here, darling," Reddy lamented. "You have no idea what a tough journey it was getting here! Why, first I ran into some whiny girl who wouldn't stop throwing herself at me, and then I met this other girl who I wanted to throw myself at, but she kept punching me..."

"You were throwing yourself at a girl?" Jakey said with a scowl.

"Oh, c'mon, Jakey, it don't mean nothing by it. You're still my favorite, bestest werewolf," Reddy said, cuddling the werewolf in an overly friendly manner.

Mandy eyed the pair as the hugging continued. "Hey, Irwin's dad. Are they..."

"Are they what? Aren't they good friends?" Irwin's dad replied.

"Are they...more than friends?" Mandy guessed.

"They're friends," Irwin's dad repeated. "Very good friends."

Mandy's eyes widened as the hugging continued. "Very good friends don't hug like _that_."

"They're very good friends. They're just boys exploring their curiosities," Irwin's dad said firmly.

Mandy looked at him, then at the very friendly vampire and werewolf. "I didn't know vampires and werewolves could even stand each other."

"Oh, they usually don't, but they hate zombies more than they hate each other, yo," Irwin spoke up as he entered the room. "That's how those two met, on a zombie hunt. They were best friends from that moment on!"

"Are you sure they're just friends?" Mandy's eyes widened again, seeing things that she could not unsee. "Okay, I know that friends do not do _that_."

"They're just friends, yo. What's the problem?"

Mandy shook her head. "You know what, just forget it."

"Well, it's about time for the party," Irwin's dad spoke up. "Are you ready for your big party, Reddy my nephew?"

The sparkling vampire broke off his close inspection of Jakey's teeth with a sigh. "Do I have to?"

"Yes. Now get a move on, young man." Irwin's dad pointed out the door, and Reddy complied with a sigh, Jakey wagging his tail slowly as Reddy left.

"So what kind of party is this going to be?" Mandy asked as she followed Irwin and Jakey out to the main hall.

"Oh, the kind that you don't have to animate much," Jakey offered up.

"You know, considering this entire story is in text, I don't know that we really need to talk much about how it's animated," Mandy pointed out.

"Don't be so negative." Jakey said as they entered the main hall. Sure enough, it was filled with groups of people moving in repeated patterns to save on effort in animating it.

Mandy looked around at the bouncing characters, shaking her head. "I feel sorry for those that aren't main characters."

"I don't need your pity, yo," Irwin sniffed.

"Here comes the party ball!" Irwin's dad's voice came from above, and from the ceiling, dangling from a rope, Reddy was lowered down, the sparkling vampire looking very put upon as he dangled from his rope, lighting up the room with sparkles.

"Ooooo," everyone declared, and applauded.

"Look at it this way, Reddy," Irwin called up. "You've found your purpose in life!"

"Can I have a different purpose?" the vampire whined as he spun around on the rope.

Mandy looked around, and realized that Grim had been right. The show didn't have normal parties or family dinners and things like that, so something was bound to happen soon. She quickly listed off the possibilities: the place could drop into the Underworld, Reddy could start making a scene, the whiny girl from before could show up, they could find a bomb wired to the place, or Eric could show up to be trampled again. She'd narrowed it down to the bomb and the whiny girl when the side wall was knocked over, sending people and cheap animation flying.

"I AM A ROBOT. I AM PROGRAMMED TO OBEY AND DESTROY," came a booming, metallic voice from the outside.

"Drat," Mandy muttered to herself, trying to figure out where giant robots was on the list.

"Hahaha!" Someone laughed a only moderately deranged laugh from above, and Irwin put a hand to his face, groaning. "If Dracula can't Dracula's house the way he wants it, no one can have Dracula's house!"

"Dad!" came Irwin dad's voice from offscreen. "Come down from there at once, you'll break your neck."

"Grandpa! We just got the loan on this place, yo!" Irwin shouted up.

"Hey, Grandpa," Reddy chimed in, "while you're up there, mind cutting me down?"

"Dracula don't listen to nobody! Dracula don't take orders! Dracula's robot is going to get rid of this mamby-pamby modern place and make it the way it should be! Now go forth and destroy, Dracula's robot!"

"I AM A ROBOT. I AM PROGRAMMED TO OBEY AND DESTROY."

Mandy looked at the robot. "You know what, I'm out of here."

"You can't leave, yo!" Irwin yelped. "You're a main character, you have to help us!"

"This is really not worth my time." Mandy shook her head.

"Mandy! We're gonna get stomped on and killed by a giant robot, yo! You think that isn't really worth your time?! We're gonna die!"

"Don't worry," Mandy said, turning and walking away. "If we find the plot device, you'll come back to life."

"Mandy!"

Of course, the plotline (such as it was) couldn't have that. The robot set its laser eyes on Mandy, and then something happened. "I AM A ROBOT. I AM PROGRAMMED TO OBEY... AND LOVE."

Mandy stopped in midstride, looking over her shoulder. "You're kidding me."

"I AM A ROBOT. I AM MADLY IN LOVE WITH THE HUMAN FEMALE. I WISH TO TAKE HER WITH ME AND CUDDLE HER AND LET HER BE MY LITTLE SNUGGLEKINS." The robot flicked Dracula off its shoulder, scooping up Mandy instead.

"Enough of the snugglekins," Mandy said, eyeing the thing. "Are you still programmed to obey and destroy?"

"FOR MY LITTLE SNUGGLEKINS, I WILL OBEY AND DESTROY."

Mandy considered this option. "Don't do it," came a little voice, and a little shoulder angel popped up on her shoulder, fluttering its little wings angelicly. "Think of the robot's needs. It's cruel to lead it on like this, Mandy! You have to let love go sometimes. Set him down gently."

Mandy stared at the shoulder angel, then turned to the other shoulder. "Who is that?" she asked her shoulder devil. "Have you seen her before?"

The shoulder devil shrugged. "Got me. Want me to dispose of her?" The devil cocked its pitchfork.

"Eeeeeee," the little shoulder angel squealed as it flew off, chased by the shoulder devil.

Mandy gave the robot a little pat on the shoulder. "Come on, robot. We have things to do."

Irwin blinked as he looked at his dad and his grandfather, the latter of which was upside down in the rubble, legs sticking out. "At least the robot is gone, yo."

"Well, it's a good thing we've got giant robot insurance," Irwin's dad sighed. "Someone hand me a phone."

Dracula popped out of the rubble. "Don't worry, Dracula already lined up a new builder! Dracula has everything under control."

"What new builder?" Irwin's dad asked. "It had better be someone good, we still have a word count quota to fill."

"Well, Dracula asked around and this one was willing to work for frozen yogurt," he said, pointing to the green, elephant-like creature pounding the wall behind them with a hammer.

Fred Fredburger proceeded to fill the rest of the chapter's word count quota. "FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER..."


	5. Chapter 5

"Every time you write a Mary Sue, God kills a Mary Sue author. Please, keep writing Mary Sues."

"Billy..."

Billy was floating in a sea of heather. ("Hi! I'm Heather!") He was back in his boy form and was no longer an assicorn, and that fact made him a little sad. There were fun things about being an assicorn, after all. You had hooves that were good for stomping, and a horn that was good for blowing and being loud and obnoxious, and how many people could claim they were an assicorn? Yes, Billy was quite content with the state of assicorn, but it seemed that all things had to end.

"Billy..."

Billy wondered why he was floating over a sea of Heathers. He would rather be floating over a sea of chocolate. Mmmm... chocolate. Pie was also good, although he had sort of given up on his cravings for pie in the last few chapters, but on the other hand, it was pie. Pie was good and yummy and had a flaky crust he could almost taste, and then it was filled with plump, overripe and oversugared chunks of apple, or cherries, or something else equally tasty. No! Back to the chocolate. Chocolate was better, because it came in all sorts of forms. There was chocolate syrup (which he could attest to the tastiness of, being that he had been chocolate syrup once), and chocolate bars and chocolate sailors (which were also tasty, but tended to make you sticky and immobile after a while from the continual tendency to eat oneself) and chocolate covered espresso beans (JAVA JAVA JAVA JAVA JAVA) and chocolate frosted sugar bombs and...

Mmmm. Chocolate.

There were other tasty things that could be eaten, too. There were hot dogs and nachos and pizza and potato chips and boogers and small, tenderized imps, and paint, and asbestos, and universes (although universes tended to give him gas) and...

Wait. Why was he on food? He was floating in a sea of Heathers. Going back to the food again, he decided to see if one of the Heathers was as tasty as pie. The Heather screamed and flailed and tried to get away, but Billy swallowed the Heather whole. He decided, after a bit of chewing and a moment of reflection, that Heathers were not as tasty as pie, but they were tastier than pi. Come to think of it, when had pi ever been tasty? Was it just a reflection of the nature of the pun? Or was there a tasty pi out there somewhere, waiting, longing for Billy to come and eat him?

"Billy, enough of that now. Seriously."

Billy drifted over the seas of Heather, who fled in terror before him, wondering if he could find a tasty pi. There had to be a way out of the sea and on the path of a tasty pi. It was the road of a long and lonely traveller, ever in search of the tasty pi, and though Billy was fatigued and in need of a tasty pie, he resolved to keep his spirit firm, to go on with determination and never give up until he had obtained the unimaginable, the unquenchable, the undistinguishable, the unremarkable, the unidentifiable, the underwritten, the undulating...

"Billy! Wake up already!"

Billy blinked, and then opened his eyes fully. The room in front of him was a plain white ceiling, and for some reason he felt like he was another character in another place in time that should be worrying about his abandonment issues with his mother. "You're finally awake, Billy," came a purring voice, a voice that was like slim, perfectly manicured fingers over a long, beautiful harp stolen from a fine museum. "I'm _so_ glad I get to meet you at _last_."

"Who are you?" Billy asked, and as he sat up, he realized something was wrong, dreadfully wrong. He looked in the conveniently placed mirror next to his bed, and then screamed in horror.

The image wasn't him. Well, it _was_ him, but not in the way he usually appeared, short and with a large nose. For one thing, his eyes were way too big, and they actually had color (they were blue). His beautiful, gloriously large nose had been reduced to nearly nothing. His hat had been removed to reveal his hair, which was no longer a little orange tuft on the top of his head, but fell in long, positively feminine lengths around his shoulders and down his back. His figure was no longer short and squat, but now tall, thin, and with an odd amount of curvature in the hips. "Wh-What's happened to me?" Billy gaped in horror, staring at himself in the mirror.

"I've made you beautiful," said the female voice that was like the very long metaphor previously used in the narration. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"Oh no," Billy gasped out, putting his long-fingered hand against the mirror. "I've turned into a bishounen."

"Of course you are," the voice continued, and Billy finally turned around to see who was strumming the strings of her voice.

The girl in front of him was beautiful by any standard in any time, with the perfect amount of weight (largely concentrated in her breasts) and some curvature to her hips but not too much. Her skin was a beautiful pale color, flawless and silky smooth to the touch from an excess of body lotions and specialty store shower gels. Her hair, long and blonde, reached down nearly to the floor, and held a slight wave so that it didn't appear actually wavy or perfectly straight, but with just the right amount of volume. Like Billy, her eyes were too large, and they were a startling gold color, or were they blue? No, now they seemed to be green. Billy shook his head, causing his long, luxurious and lavish locks with far too much alliteration to shake about. But enough about him, back to the girl; she wore a sparkling white dress that shone more than Irwin's cousin Reddy, and seemed to have gold and silver threads woven in, but Billy couldn't be sure because that might be too much detail for a non-high definition television show. "Who are you?" Billy asked in awe.

"My name," she said, placing a delicate hand on her chest, "is Princess Mariah Callista Amethyst Star Hope Faith Charity Sakura Eowyn of the world, the third. It's a pleasure to meet you, Billy of Endsville, Billy the Great and Marvelous."

"Uh, okay," he said with a tilt of his head. "So you're Princess Whatsit Whodunit Thingamajigger Banana Fanna fo Fanna Rama Lama Ding Dong the third?"

"Princess Mariah Callista Amethyst Star Hope Faith Charity Sakura Eowyn of the world, the third," she repeated sweetly.

"Right. I think I'm going to call you Jill," he said firmly.

"I'd really rather you call me Princess Mariah Callista Amethyst Star Hope Faith Charity Sakura Eowyn of the world, the third."

"You're doing that just for the word count now, aren't you?" Billy gave her a look.

She avoided his gaze. "...Possibly."

"Okay, Princess Jill," Billy said, standing up and nearly falling over at the new perspective things seemed to take when you were more than 120 pixels off the ground. "What have you done to me? Did you kidnap me?"

"I did not," she said sweetly. "I saved you from that terrible warp in space and time. Don't you remember?" Her eyes grew perfectly wide. "After the pack of lawyers and yaoi fangirls..."

"There were lawyers AND yaoi fangirls?" Billy shuddered. "So why did you bring me here?"

"To make you beautiful," she said with a wave of her elegantly shaped hand. "So you can live here with me forever and ever. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Will there be pie?" he asked hopefully. "And chocolate? I don't want another Heather."

"There will be lots of good things to eat," she reassured, "and baths for plenty of gratuitous shower scenes, and massage therapists to ease the tension in your smooth, broad shoulders."

"I don't know about this," Billy said slowly. "This sounds like it should be on Adult Swim."

"Don't insinuate such a thing!" Princess Jill snapped, pointing a finger at him. "Adult Swim doesn't appreciate REAL quality! All they care about are poorly drawn skits with jokes that are about as funny as an All Your Base are Belong to Us reference."

"YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO ESCAPE MAKE YOUR TIME," yelled an obligatory cameo.

"You shut up, I'm ranting here," Princess Jill continued. "As I was saying, they don't appreciate anime. Do you know what happens to our glorious, well-written plotlines and beautiful works of art? Banished to the far reaches of the five AM slot! I ask you, is that fair?"

"Well-written plotlines? Do you mean like Shin-chan?" Billy asked. "I met him once. He was kind of cool."

"Well... that's an exception." Princess Jill folded her arms. "My point stands that Cartoon Network doesn't know what they're missing. You and I are going to go to a REAL network. Like QVC."

"Um, I don't think QVC shows anime."

"You're missing the point!" Princess Jill said with a stamp of her perfectly shaped, lotus-like foot, delicately wrapped in high heels that would put Eris's to shame. "The point is that they suck and I'm right. Now you and I are going to be happy and save the world on occasion and have lots of magically appearing children from the future. We'll have daring adventures and hot, steamy romance where we have to fade to black just to get anything on screen, and madcap hilarity with driving lessons, and absolutely nothing that will become a meme on the internet. It'll be fun!"

Billy looked at her for a long moment. "I think this sounds like too much commitment," he said. "I'm a free man, you can't tie me down. I gotta be able to move with the wind and go where I gotta go and do what I wanna do, whatever the weather. And search for tasty pi."

"Don't talk nonsense, Billy," Princess Jill said with a sweet smile, but this time it held a bit of an edge to it. "You're mine. I won't let anyone else have you," she purred, running her fingers through his hair.

"I said no," he protested. "Also, I want a haircut."

"I'm the only one that gets to say no, Billy. I am the main character now. I'm taking over this fic. You are not the main character any more. You can be the love interest, or the ugly, stupid villain who constantly gets defeated by me."

Billy considered. "I have a question."

"Yes, Billy?"

"Do the villains get pie?"

"No, Billy. They do not get pie, or chocolate, or anything good to eat. They are stupid and ugly and only get the bitter, terrible taste of defeat." Billy considered again, and after a moment, she sighed and asked, "What are you thinking of?"

"I don't think defeat would taste THAT bad," Billy said. "Put a bag of sugar on it and it should be fine."

"Oh, for crying out-It's a figure of speech, Billy! This show is mine now! No longer will it be called the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy! It will be the Adventures of Princess Mariah-"

"Jill."

"-Mariah Callista Amethyst Star Hope Faith Charity Sakura Eowyn of the world, the third! And there isn't anything you or anyone else can do to stop me!"

Suddenly, a giant robot broke into the room, crushing her under its foot. "I AM A ROBOT. I AM PROGRAMMED TO OBEY AND DESTROY," it declared cheerfully. "HOW DID I DO, MASTER MANDY?"

"That'll do, robot. That'll do." Mandy peered down at Billy, and then turned away in abject disgust. "By Tartakovsky's camera cuts, it's another thing I can't unsee. What the heck happened to you, Billy?"

"She made me pretty," Billy said with a tearful gaze.

"...I can see that. Well, we'll have to fix it."

"I don't think we can," he said, pointing to the robot's foot. "You sort of squished what was causing it."

"Then we'll have to find another one. But we'll have to be careful. Mary Sues are a tricky business. Get up here," she said, and the robot picked him up. "No. He sits on the _other_ shoulder."

"A Mary Sue?" Billy echoed. "Her name was Jill."

"They're perfect characters, or so they think. In reality, they're perfectly obnoxious," Mandy told him. "They're the product of the sick, demented mind of a fangirl who decides she wants to marry a fictional character. In this case," she looked over at Billy, who had somehow managed to start drooling with his small mouth, "they must have been really desperate."

"I'M OBNOXIOUS!" he crowed, then sighed. "It's just not the same when you're tall. Where are we going to find another Mary Sue, Mandy?"

"Don't worry. We're going to go to the largest concentration of Mary Sues in the world. One of them is bound to be dumb enough to help us."

"Where's that, Mandy?"

"Fanfiction dot net."

The robot cheerfully tromped its way through cyberspace, coming to the ground that was known in some places as the Pit of Voles. Indeed, there were many voles lurking about, chattering at each other in loud, squeaky voices about how THEIR story was the best and it was everyone ELSE that didn't know what they were doing and how come no one gave them nice reviews? "I don't know about this," Billy said nervously as several of the voles began to look at him with hungry gazes. "I somehow get the impression this is a very bad place for me to be."

"Just keep your wits about you. If one of them tries to attack, do something disgusting," Mandy told him.

"Like what?"

"Just be yourself, really. Maybe it'll be better if you travel with your finger in your nose," she mused.

"Okay!" Billy agreed, then yelped as his long finger went up his tiny nose. "I think I poked my brain! Ooooo," he said as he did it again. "It's all squishy!"

"Don't do that," Mandy told him. "You might poke something important. Like your breathing."

"Don't worry, I won't do anthijflsjfujsoijfksnlnhvihxov purple blargh oxen pineapple poker playing cheesesteak basketball baka baka kawaii kawaii Oh, Nelson, don't hit me there!"

Mandy looked over at him, wide-eyed. "Don't do that again."

"Sorry."

The robot trampled through the various sections of the website, looking for a Mary Sue that would meet their qualifications: having the ability to turn Billy back to normal and being dumb enough to actually do it. "What about there?" he asked, pointing to the Twilight section.

"We already spoofed Twilight in the last chapter. Besides, I doubt the Mary Sues there have the ability to do anything other than be whiny and obnoxious. What's over there?"

"Um...Looks like Yu-Gi-Oh. What about there?"

"What are they going to do? Paper cut us to death?" Mandy rolled her eyes. "What's over there?"

"The Beatles. They write fanfiction for a bunch of old British guys?" Billy echoed.

Mandy looked in horror at a few of the Mary Sues hidden away behind fake "PG-13" signs. "That's just _wrong_."

"Let's move on," Billy agreed, directing the robot to a new section. "Yu Yu Hakusho? What's that?"

"I don't know. Maybe it has promise," Mandy said, peering in.

Inside, they could see a large arena where two Mary Sues were duking it out, one blonde and pretty, one dark and gothic. "Yuusuke and Kurama are mine!" the blonde, Perpetua Chrysanthemum Bladeronde, screamed as she fired off energy blasts at the other girl. "Go sleep with Hiei!"

"Hiei's busy beating Kuwabara!" the gothic Raven Nevermore le Lestat shouted back, deflecting the blasts with black shields of her own. "Foolish she-dog, the hotties shall be mine!"

Billy and Mandy blinked, then looked at each other. "On second thought, let's not go to Yu Yu Hakusho," Billy said. "Tis a silly place."

"Well, what else is there?" Billy asked, looking around. "Ronin Warriors? What's that about?"

"Oh, I liked that one," Mandy commented, looking inside.

"Really? Why's that?" Billy asked.

"It's a show about a lot of prissy prettyboys getting the living daylights beat out of them," Mandy replied. "It was right up my alley. Saint Seiya is good, too."

"The eighties had issues," Billy said with a shake of his head. "Oh, look, it's Sailor Moon. Maybe they can help us. Hey, ladies!" Billy called out, waving to them. "Can you help us out?"

A short while later, they left the Sailor Moon section, and Billy was now a girl. "That wasn't what I had in mind," he said with a sulk.

"Well, really, what did you expect from the show that gave us incestual cousins in the dub?" Mandy pointed out. "Let's get away from anime. What have we got over this way?"

"Star Trek. Do you think it's safe here?" Billy asked.

Mandy frowned, then shook her head. "Their sues are old and dangerous. They've been around longer than most of these other sues. I doubt we can slip anything around them."

"Well, what about Star Wars? It's right next door."

"The Force doesn't really count as magical powers, Billy."

"It totally is! It's the power of the MIND!" Billy declared, waving a hand in front of Mandy.

She resisted the urge to smack him, then decided that was silly, and smacked him. "What's that huge section over there? It looks promising."

"Harry Potter," Billy said, squinting at the sign. "Oh, I remember him. He had the Chamberpot of Secrets!"

"Not quite, but close enough. This might be worth our while. Onward, robot," Mandy instructed, pointing ahead.

"But what if one of them tries to stop us? We're not in Cartoon Network anymore, Mandy."

"Don't worry. If anyone asks, say you're from a crossover." Mandy looked down at a sign in front of a Sue, reading the summary. "Tia, daughter of Voldemort..." She looked up and glared at the fourth wall. ...hey, that's not me!

"I don't think she looks very trustworthy," Billy said to Mandy.

"Yeah, let's skip over that one. Next?"

They passed through Angelas and Daisies, Rubys and Crystals, Ais, Sakuras and an Orenjii, and even a Robert and a Tifa Lockhart, but none of them seemed to fulfill their expectations. "This is a huge section," Billy said, crossing his arms over his ample assets. "How are we ever going to find the one that will work?"

"Holy..." Mandy pointed ahead of them. "I think we have a winner."

Ahead of them was a woman. She actually looked the same as every other sue in the section; blonde and perfectly proportioned, but this one was carrying a sixteen foot sword which didn't seem to actually follow the rules of reality in that it was magically not dragging in the ground. She was standing near a dragon who was gazing upon her lovingly and casting lots of powerful and forbidden magic without a wand simply to show that she could. Her name, according to the badly spelled story summary, was Lady Sarena Karasu Diamond Hope Tiger Lily Greenleaf-Nailo. "Are you sure about this?" Billy asked quietly. "She looks a little over the top."

"That's sort of the idea, Billy." Mandy steered the robot into Sarena's section of the internet, parking it nearby. "Hey, Sarena Karasu Diamond Hope Tiger Lily Greenleaf-Nailo. We come to worship and call upon your unimaginable skills."

"Well, all right," she agreed, "But only if you call me Lady Sarena Karasu Diamond Hope Tiger Lily Greenleaf-Nailo. It's a title passed down through generations of English nobility-"

"Sure, Lady Sarena. Look, we need-"

"Lady Sarena Karasu Diamond Hope Tiger Lily Greenleaf-Nailo," she corrected firmly. "Yes, you have to say the whole thing every time."

Mandy restrained a sigh, and wondered if this was another cheap plot to up the wordcount. "Lady Sarena Karasu Diamond Hope Tiger Lily Greenleaf-Nailo. Will you listen to our plea _now_?"

"Speak, and I shall grant your wish," she said with a wave of his arm.

"We need Billy changed back to normal," Mandy said, holding up a picture of Billy in all his large-nosed, short-legged, beady-eyed, American animated glory.

"Now why would I do that?" Sarena asked, looking at the picture. "He's hideous."

"No, wait! I wanna be an assicorn again!" Billy protested, doodling a rough sketch of a donkey with a trumpet on its head and holding it out. "It's awesome."

"That's even worse," Sarena said, making a face. "Why would I do that?"

"It's a challenge," Mandy told her. "We don't think any of the other Sues-er, ladies, can pull it off. You're our only hope," she said, then added silently, _At least until we go to the next page._

"Hm. Well, I suppose I could do it if you tell that Tia girl about it. You know, that one daughter of Voldie's," she said, adjusting her ample bodice. "Show her how much better I am than her."

"You have my word, Lady Sarena Karasu Diamond Hope Tiger Lily Greenleaf-Nailo."

Sarena rolled up her sleeves, then held out a hand. "Regille! My sword."

The dragon stopped making adoring eyes at her long enough to hand her the oversized sword, and she pointed it at Billy. With a BAMF, Billy turned into a plate of flying yams. "Huh," Sarena said. "That's interesting."

"Wanna try again?" Mandy gave her a look.

"Assicorn," Sarena repeated to herself, and Billy turned into a picture frame with no picture inside. "Assicorn," she repeated with a frown, waving the sword again, and now Billy was a lamp with dangling beaded extensions. Sarena glared, shaking the sword furiously. "Assicorn! Assicorn! Assicorn!" In rapid succession, Billy became a shot of espresso, a flag of Dixie, a cell phone, a hand grenade with no pin, an incense diffuser, cheez-its and diet coke, Dayquil, an alarm clock, a bolt of lightning, a hole punch, a TV remote, a dreamcatcher, a telephone booth that had some guy run out in a panic, a spade, a pillow, a stapler, a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and the list kept going. "You know, maybe we should stop," Mandy said as Billy became a plate of tater tots.

"No, no, I'll have it in a moment," Sarena said. "I can do anything. Watch." She pointed, and Billy next became a ceiling fan, then a futon, a pair of pajamas, a pack of post-it notes, an empty pizza box which complained in Billy's voice, "I'm dizzy!" a large uncut diamond, a broken X-box controller, an envelope, a rather surreal version of Celine Dion who attempted to flee to Canada, a panda with a stick of bamboo that mumbled something about Atlanta, a pen, a peach (another one?), a robotic version of Jesus with a sword, an ice cube that quickly began to melt, an onion, the entire city of Glasgow, Scotland who stood up and cheered, and a skyscraper which crushed several other Sues in the nearby vicinity.

"No, seriously," Mandy said, watching as Billy ended up as a plate of buttermilk pancakes with a side of bacon. "We'll try someone else."

"It was getting annoying anyway," Sarena declared, tossing her sword over her shoulder. As it bonked Billy in his bacon, there was a yelp of "Ouch!" and then Billy was an assicorn, hooves clutching at his stomach.

Mandy sighed. "Rule of Funny. I should have known."

"Yaaaay, I'm an assicorn again!" Billy declared, prancing around. Then he paused. "Wait. I guess that's not really what we were aiming for, was it?"

"It's good enough for the moment. Let's get out of here and find the others," Mandy stated. "Oh, and robot?"

"YES, MY LITTLE SNUGGLEKINS?"

"Can the snugglekins. See that section over there?" She pointed to the one that read 'The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy'.

"I SEE IT, MY LITTLE SNUGGLEKINS."

"Nuke it. Then let's go."

"I HEAR AND OBEY."


	6. Chapter 6

"If you think this is funny, wait until you see the assets he put on his 1003."

Grim woke up, and realized it was all a horrible dream.

Checking himself over in the mirror, Grim let out a sigh of relief. There was no magic scythe, no demons of the underworld, no bizarre adventures possibly inspired by illicit drugs, and most importantly, no Billy and Mandy demanding his continual friendship. Had it really all just been a bad, recurring dream, done in 2D animation? Grim resolved not to think about it any longer, as he had to get ready for work.

A cup of coffee with two sugars and a non-dairy vanilla flavored creamer, a poppyseed bagel with low-calorie strawberry flavored cream cheese, and a shower and change of clothing later, Grim was on his way to work. Oh, the morning commute. It could be irritating, he thought to himself, leaning on the horn as someone in front of him attempted to wedge their SUV into his lane. "Hey, knock it off, you slack-jawed imbecile!" he yelled, reaching over into the passenger's side seat. His magic scythe would slide right through that car like a third grader through candy, and let's see how many people he cut off then...!

Wait. Grim shook his head. That had been just a dream. He was a normal guy on his way to his normal job in a normal office.

Grim worked in a mortgage office, and as he entered the doors and rode the elevator up a few floors, he couldn't help but feel that the universe was playing some sort of cosmic joke on him at his choice of career. He hopped off the elevator, and someone that he hadn't noticed in the elevator moved past him, slipping into their cubicle quickly with a "Mornin'". Grim blinked. The coworker had been by so quickly, he hadn't been sure who it was, what they looked like, their age or gender, or even if they were human. He shook himself at that last part. Of course they were human; what else would his coworker's be?

"Bon matin!" his quirky cubicle partner greeted him as he entered. She sipped at the tea someone who is not appearing in this fanfic gave her and smiled, waiting for his greeting.

"...Good morning, Claudie," he replied, and she scowled, disappointed in his monolingualism. He removed a sticky note from his seat and read it before determining it belonged to her and returning it. "How have things been?"

"Eric the Inchworm sent me another email," she said with a shrug. "So, you know why their borrower is named Wang? Because their loan officer is a-"

"A Richard, yes, I know," Grim interrupted her, and she grinned, sticking a post-it to his briefcase before turning around in her spinny chair. She sipped at a box of juice the Heather from the last chapter had brought her, watching him. "Anyone else having a crisis that I should know about?"

"The geniuses in Florida need a reapproval," she said, handing him a file. "They changed their contract."

"Again?" he groaned, looking it over. "Do we have documentation of their money paid down?"

"Now why would we need something like that? You mean we don't just take people's word for it?" She rolled her eyes. "But remember, the mortgage crisis was all _our_ fault."

"Do you want some coffee?" Grim asked as she put a sticky note on the forehead of someone who was attempting to hide behind a fake plastic plant.

"Milk, no sugar. Also, Lisa wants to know if you have that stuff you asked for in the file already."

Grim gave her a look as he handed her the coffee that the person behind the fake plastic plant handed to him. "Of course I have it. I was just testing them. They passed!"

"Get the sarcasm out of your system while you can, mon grand," she chuckled. "Kentie wants to know if his file can close since he sent you the last piece about a minute ago, and Tequila wants to know why all the Georgia files are at the back of your queue."

"Tell Kentie that he can go jump off a bridge, and tell Tequila it's because I hate Georgia, and that's why I live here. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that their files come with all of two documents."

She giggled. "You have such a charming, upbeat personality, Grim. Sometimes I wonder what you'd be doing if you weren't here."

He sat down, removed a sticky note from his power button, and turned his computer on, twiddling a pencil as he waited for his slow, outdated computer to boot up. As he did, Claudie reached over, attaching another sticky note to his tie and another to his phone receiver.

When his computer finally finished booting up, Grim opened up his email and stared in despair at the long list of them piling into his inbox. "You know, Claudie, I think if I ever told someone about this job and how stupid people are, they wouldn't believe me."

"I'm sure there's someone out there that understands you," Claudie reassured. "Like the author."

"Like the what?"

"Oh, never you mind, mon cher."

By the afternoon, Grim felt himself full enveloped in his despair as the work kept pouring in and helping hands became harder to find. Most of his other coworkers were off complaining how busy they were, before they left early. Claudie, whose job was similar to Grim's in that she ended up doing all the odd sorts of jobs that only took five minutes, but were so numerous that you could spend a day on them alone, apologized and offered him some sticky notes of encouragement. She couldn't stay too late either, because she was meeting a group of people and working on writing novels with them before the end of the month, and she was behind where she wanted to be. (Some people had strange hobbies, he thought.) He wasn't sure about the coworker that kept appearing in his cubicle but he couldn't seem to get a good look at; apparently he or she was the office ninja.

Five o'clock came and went, and he was still there, staring at files from loan officers who would probably never appreciate his efforts unless he wasn't doing it fast enough. Twenty more stood in a stack on his desk, and he had the fleeting thought that at least he had a fort for when the terrorists came and attacked. And that wasn't even going into the unexpected binder-clip crisis he was still working on solving. "It can't possibly get any worse," he groaned.

His email binged, a sound he was learning to hate almost as much as the phone ringing, a sound that he had started hearing in his head even when he wasn't getting emails or wasn't at his desk. Checking it, he could see it was from the national boss, and it had a report attached. "Oh, no," Grim groaned, reading the email, whose body consisted of 'I need this by 9AM tomorrow morning'. "I can't take it anymore. I'm going to shoot myself, I'm going to quit, I'll just throw myself out the window and leave a person-shaped splat on the sidewalk below. Is today going to be the day? The day I have an emotional breakdown, or just say something so vile to a loan officer that their grandchildren cringe?"

"Oh, come on, you wuss," came a voice from above. "I put up with this every day and you've barely been there one. You're the Grim Reaper, for crying out loud."

Grim looked up, and wondered when they had gotten an intercom system. "It's not an intercom, you moron," the voice said. "This is the voice of the author."

"The author?"

A sigh. "It's the voice of God. Understand?"

"Yes, God. I didn't think we were still on speaking terms after that conversation I had with one of your lambs."

"Uh...She's a sinner and she needed rebuking," the voice replied. "Look, you know what? The grass is always greener on the other side and all that BS. You have a great job. You get to do fun things. You're the goshdarned Grim Reaper, which is about as badass as you get for anything not named Batman. So get out there and enjoy your job."

"What exactly are you trying to do?" he asked after a moment of stunned confusion.

"This? This is me wrapping up your stupid mental angst over your general situation that you seem to whine about most episodes. Because this is a crack fic, as The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy is meant to be, and I really don't want to be dealing with your emotional trauma right now."

"Um, okay, if you say so."

"I do say so. Now wake up," the voice commanded, "and by the way, you look much better in the robe. Ties do not suit you."

"Grim? Hey Grim! Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim-" There was the sound of a whack. Grim woke up, and realized it was all a horrible dream.

"You're awake," Mandy observed as he sat up, picking up his scythe. "You missed the last two chapters."

"What happened?" he asked, getting to his feet.

"Well, first I ended up in a bad Twilight parody with a sparkling vampire cousin of Irwin's and his werewolf 'friend' that he was way too friendly with. Dracula tried to tear down the family house with a giant robot," here Mandy gestured over her shoulder at the giant robot who was making heart-shaped eyes at her, "because he didn't like how modern it was, but the giant robot fell in love with me. Billy got turned into a prettyboy by a Mary Sue who I squished with the giant robot, and we had to go to to find a dumber one to change him back, and he went through about two paragraphs of objects chosen by the audience who isn't reading this fic before we got him back to how he is now. Did I miss anything?" she directed at Billy, who shook his head and tooted his horn.

"Does any of this make sense in context?" Grim asked.

"No. It really doesn't."

"Well, off to the next chapter, then, I suppose," Grim said. The robot picked them all up, carrying them away on its shoulders. "Where is the robot taking us?"

"Wherever the plot dictates, Grim."

He nodded, staring off into the distance. "Hm. She was cute."

"Who was cute?"

"Claudie."

"Claudie?" Mandy echoed, raising an eyebrow.

"Never you mind, mon cher." Mandy hit him. "Ow! What was that for?"

"Because," Mandy said patiently, "that's the _masculine_ version. Learn some French."


	7. Chapter 7

This is the Chapter That Doesn't Exist.

It did exist, once.

It was over twenty-two thousand words of filler involving commentary on Wikipedia articles, singalongs, thwarted bad sex scenes, no contractions, and Grim being called "Grim the Scary".

Basically, it was the author going "hey, I've never had a chance to try out all those dirty word count tricks in Nanowrimo, why not do that now?"

Yep.

(That Grim is called Grim the Scary is important. Remember that.)

(Twenty-two thousand words is also important. Remember that too.)

(The bad thwarted sex scene is not important. You can forget that part.)

And since nobody has time for patent nonsen... okay, you clearly have time for SOME patent nonsense since you're reading this. But The Chapter That Doesn't Exist is an overly long extended gag. So just laugh at the idea of a very long nonsense filler chapter that involved all those things I mentioned above, and secretly breathe a sigh of relief that you dodged that bullet. I won't mind.

Done that?

On to the final chapter, then! 


	8. Chapter 8

The stage was set. The trials of nonsense and Mary Sues had been conquered. Everyone was ready. Nergal Jr. was texting away on his cell phone like a teenage girl who just found out Benedict Cumberbatch had a boyfriend. "Well?" Grim asked as he peered over the short boy's shoulder. "Any luck yet?"

"Don't rush him, Grim," Nergal scolded the Grim Reaper. "He's a professional, these things take time."

"Got something," Nergal Jr. spoke up, reading the text aloud. "'Beezelbub is having that party Friday and wants to know if you can bring some eye of newt'..." Nergal Jr. sighed, and began texting a response back. "Argh, I told them I wasn't coming already."

"Are you sure these undead know what they're talking about?" Mandy asked Nergal Jr., frowning at him. "They are undead, after all. You know how they gossip."

"Don't worry, I'm sure someone knows something," Nergal Jr. replied, and then checked the new text he got. "Ah, this says something. 'Fifty Thousand is approaching. The path will be revealed. You must look for the person who has been there since day one but is not with your party. The spiders will know where.'" Nergal Jr. raised an eyebrow at his phone. "That doesn't make much sense."

"Well, it gives us a place to start," Grim said decisively. "We'll go find out what the spiders know."

"S-spiders?" Billy asked, trembling a bit in his assicorn fur.

"Suck it up, Billy, or we won't be able to do fun things anymore," Mandy told him, following behind Grim.

"Okay. I'll be brave," Billy whimpered.

"So where are we going?" Nergal asked Grim as he walked alongside the Jamacian reaper. "You sound like you had someone in mind."

"'We' are not going anywhere, Nergal," Grim told him firmly. "I didn't get rid of one hanger-on just to obtain another."

"But you're letting _him_ come," Nergal protested, pointing to Irwin, who was still struggling with his cape.

"Not by choice."

"He's only along in case we run into more Martian wolverines," Mandy added.

"And what about the giant robot?"

"That's just a gag," Grim protested. "I'm sure it'll be blown up sooner or later."

"And the sparkling vampire and portly werewolf?"

Grim turned around and glared at Reddy and Jakey. "Get lost, you two! There are plenty of other fics of those kind for you to go have fun in!"

The werewolf and vampire scampered off with yips of fear. "Well, that's settled," Grim said. "Now you too, Nergal. Go back home to your wife."

"Aw, c'mon, Grimmy! I'm useful, too!"

"And what exactly can you do?"

"Dad," Nergal Jr. interrupted. "They know where they're going, now let's go home. It's almost time for our board game. You're not going to leave Mom at home all alone, are you?"

Caught, Nergal hung his head. "Well, it was fun travelling with you for several thousand words," he said cheerfully. "Time for us to head out!"

Grim sighed, shaking his head. "Just the three of us again."

"Plus our Martian wolverine detector," Mandy added, pointing to Irwin.

"I'm a valuable member of this team, yo!"

"Uh-huh, sure. Let's go," Grim said, tearing open a hole in space and time.

"So where are we going?" Mandy asked him. "To your friend the spider queen?"

"You know of anyone else who has a better spider network?"

"Only the facebooking spiders. Besides, isn't she still a bit sore at you over the Grim Reaper thing?"

"I keep telling her to get caught up with the times," Grim said with a shake of his head. "Besides, that was a long time ago, and we worked everything out in that movie special. I'm sure it'll be fine."

"You just had to say that, didn't you?" Mandy asked ten minutes later.

The three of them were dangling upside down, bound up from neck to feet in spider webs, hordes of little spiders dancing around them. Billy was a gibbering mess, mumbling incoherently with his eyes closed, trying to pretend the spiders weren't there. "You have a lot of nerve showing up here, Grim Reaper," came a quiet, wrathful voice, and then the sound of many legs echoed up from the darkness, and the Spider Queen came into view.

"SPIDER!" Billy screamed, horn letting out a 'blatt' in his fear.

"Velma!" Grim said in surprise, scowling at her from his upside down position. "What's the meaning of this? I thought we were friends again! The past is the past!"

"You, Grim Reaper, are the scum of the earth!" she shouted, pointing his own scythe at him. "I should tear you apart for what you've done to me."

"I told you in that episode, it wasn't how it looked! I-"

"Wait! Stop!" cried another voice, and then Jeff came running up, cuddling Billy the assicorn, who began to shriek. "Oh, dad! You came to visit! I'm so glad. You're not hurt, are you? Let me get you down and make you some tea."

"SPIDER," Billy hollered, "I'LL STOMP YOU FLAT."

"Hm, no tea then? How about milk?"

"Hello, Jeff," Grim greeted, swaying a little from his hanging position. "It's been a few episodes since I saw you last. Have you been down here with Velma all this time?"

Jeff nodded. "Don't tell Dad," he whispered, "but we're sort of... you know..."

"Dating?" Mandy asked.

"Shh! Don't say it so loud!" Jeff quickly cut the three of them down, letting Billy loose.

Billy immediately retrieved an encyclopedia and began trying to smash Jeff with it. One of the spiders, displeased at the appropriation of its encyclopedia, retrieved it and began to beat Billy with it in return.

"It's nice that dad has friends who love him as much as he loves me," Jeff said.

"Uh-huh." Mandy turned to Velma. "So why are you mad at Grim now?"

"Why else would I be mad?" the spider queen demanded. "He forgot my birthday! He didn't even send a card!"

"I did not!" Grim protested. "I sent you a gift. Didn't you get it?"

"No. It never arrived!"

"They told me they shipped it! Let me find out," Grim said, pulling out his cell phone and dialing a number. He hung up after a moment. "I can't get reception out here. I really need to switch to that Attila company Nergal told me about. More bars in more places, my bony backside!"

"Let's give him the benefit of the doubt for now," Mandy said to Velma. "We have a situation and we need your help."

"Really? What sort of situation would that be that he'd come out here after forgetting my birthday?"

"The plot device has gone missing," Mandy told her. "It's the thing that returns everything to normal after something disasterous happens. If we don't find it, we'll be screwed next time the world blows up. The word among the undead is that your spiders might know where it is."

"A plot device?" Velma frowned, skittering around a bit as she paced as only a spider can. "What does it look like?"

"We don't know, but it's apparently with someone that's been with us since day one but isn't in our group right now," Mandy explained. "We're not sure who that is, but..."

"I'll set the TV Tropes spiders on it. If anyone can figure it out, they can," she said with a nod. She then turned to a few spiders, shrieking at them, and they scampered off to do her bidding. "It shouldn't take them long, provided they don't get distracted and forget what they're doing. It _is_ TV Tropes, after all."

Mandy nodded as she watched some other spiders skitter around. "Sounds like you're quite well-resourced."

"Well, Jeff's been quite the help. He's good at managing people, you know. Everyone seems to like him."

"Everyone except for the moron with arachnophobia." Mandy shook her head.

"Hey, Dad, you hear that?" Jeff called over. "Velma says I'm good at managing people! Aren't you proud?"

"Superbly," Billy groaned from under the encyclopedia.

Velma sighed, checking a clock on the wall. "I'm betting they got distracted. Excuse me." She skittered away, and from the other room, there were sounds of shrieking.

"She's such a powerful motivator, don't you agree?" Jeff asked cheerfully.

"Terrificly so," Mandy agreed as a few spiders fled in front of them in fear. "I should pick up a few tips while I'm here."

Velma came out with a broom in one hand. "Well, they weren't terribly specific around all the gibbering," the spider queen sighed, "but they did say the person you're looking for is in the Hall of Wandering Cameos. I'll have someone show you the way."

"Oh! Pick me! I could use some quality bonding time with Dad," Jeff spoke up.

Velma eyed the beaten assicorn skeptically, then shook her head. "Sorry, Jeff sweetie, but I could really use your help here. It's going to take me a while to gather them all up again."

"Aww..."

"We'll stop by in the epilogue," Mandy promised. "Now where's this guide?"

The spider queen gestured, and a spider stepped forward, giving them a bow. "SPIDER!" Billy screamed, stomping on it and squishing it into minor character bits.

"Uh, Billy," Mandy pointed out. "You're surrounded by spiders."

Billy looked up, donkey ears twitching, then drooping flat as he looked around, all the black spiders around him eyeing them with their beady eyes, their glistening fangs, their hairy legs, their painted toes... "What," Velma said with a frown, crossing her arms, "some of us like to be fashionable."

Billy let out a scream and ran through the nearest wall. "Do we really need him for the rest of the story?" Mandy asked.

"I suppose so," Grim sighed, stepping out through the new hole in the wall and dragging Billy back by a back leg. "All right, let's go."

The new spider guide was careful to stay away from Billy and his stomping hooves as it led the way to a large, courthouse-like hall, characters passing in and out as they watched. "Nice digs they got here," Grim observed. "Is this the Hall of Wandering Cameos?"

"This is it. Excuse me, I remembered I left some bread in the oven," the spider said, skittering away out of range of Billy.

Billy responded by pulling out a rocket launcher, firing a shot at the distant, retreating spider and nodding in satisfaction as he watched the distant mushroom cloud. "I HATE SPIDERS!"

"That is an impressive feat for someone that doesn't have thumbs." Mandy shook her head, then entered the Hall of Wandering Cameos.

A few looked up at her entrance, some with awe, and others with fear. "It's a main character," they whispered among themselves.

"What is she doing here?"

"Is it the end of the world?"

"Her kind doesn't _belong_ here."

"I'm looking for a plot device," Mandy stated as Billy and Grim joined her. "Anyone seen one?"

There wasn't an audible response, but several shook their heads, clearly not knowing what they were talking about. "Hi, Billy," came a voice from nearby. "Remember me?"

Billy turned, and then let out a scream as Heather approached him with the spider's encyclopedia, bringing it down on his trumpet. "Eat me, will you? I'll teach you to watch what you do to wandering cameos in your dreams!" she shouted in fury as she beat him.

"Leave them. I'm not getting in the middle of that," Grim said, then paused as he saw a familiar face. "Claudie!"

"Oh, mon grand," she greeted, walking over and sticking a sticky note on his face. He pulled it off and looked at it, and there was a little heart drawn on it. "Good to see you again!"

If there was blood in Grim's body, he would have felt it rush to his face. "G-good to see you again, Claudie. How have you been since we met up in the corporate chapter?"

"Oh, here and there. Writing novels, being a goddess, that sort of thing. Yourself?"

"Nothing nearly as good as that. Say, Claudie, I was wondering," Grim began. "If you're not busy after this story, maybe we could-"

"Enough, lover boy," Mandy interrupted, dragging him away. "We have a job to do, remember?"

"But it's not fair," Grim whimpered. "I never get a love interest. One that doesn't eventually run screaming, anyway."

"Keep that up and I'll find you a Mary Sue," Mandy threatened as she looked around. "What is this place, anyway?"

"It's exactly what it sounds like," Grim said. "It's the place where the cameos come to hang out. See that guy with the sunflowers? He gets around quite a bit. And that man with the black hair and the stupid grin...Actually, I don't know what he's doing here," Grim said with a frown. "He's hardly a cameo, most of the time. And there are the alien cultists from the previous episode."

"And the Martian wolverines," Mandy noted as Irwin was set upon by said creature. "Congratulations, Irwin; you've fulfilled your purpose again."

"Not cool, yo!" Irwin protested as the giant ravenous beast swallowed him whole.

Mandy ignored his cries, walking forward past the presidents and the peasants, the pheasants and the residents. They passed hens, wrens, Bens, and Michigan, a Mr. Ian Woon who was trying to exorcise a ghost, a trebuchet, and a ghost who had mysteriously died by shovel. They continued walking, and then Mandy paused, pointing up ahead. "I think I found a clue."

"What's that?" Grim looked forward, and peered at the ground. "There's a little trail of words on the ground. Hold on, let me decipher them... Was this what you meant?"

"No," she said, pointing, "I meant the giant neon sign that said 'CLUE' in big orange letters with the animated bat next to it."

Grim looked up, and frowned at the sign, as if it had slighted him somehow. "That is completely unfair."

"More importantly," Mandy said as Billy stumbled over, "look at who's under it."

Grim did so, and his eyes lit up with flames of remembered rage as he pointed a bony finger. "It's you, Boogey! I shouldn't be surprised at all that you had something to do with this disaster!"

"Grimmy, old boy," the Boogey Man greeted, clearly enjoying the reaper's frustration. "What's got you so down?"

Grim pulled out his scythe, pulling it back like a shotgun as he pointed it at Boogey. "I'm going to enjoy making you more pathetic than Eric the Inchworm."

"Calm down, Grimmy my boy," Boogey said with a wave of his hands, unbothered by the threat. "You can't get in to see the plot device without me, so you may as well listen. I'm not the guy you want. The real boss is here, behind me."

"What are you getting at, Boogey?" Mandy questioned. "How did you get out of that alternate dimension, anyway? If we had a working plot device, that would be one thing, but with it down... And if you tell me a story about rampaging tourists or rodents of unusual size or busty pirate lesbian ninjas, I will hurt you."

"Nothing of the sort," Boogey reassured. "It was lawyers."

"Lawyers?" Grim echoed. "How did lawyers get you out?"

"I sued the alternate dimension for wrongful imprisonment," Boogey said cheerfully. "Got free AND their pants out of it." He pulled out a pair of amazingly large boxer shorts, having to hold his arms out just to unfold them. "Ta-da!"

"Ooooo," Billy commented, properly impressed.

"All right, Boogey," Mandy said. "The time for casual conversation and side diversions is over. We have a plot device to save. Now where is it and who has it?"

"You'll see who they are when you get in behind me," Boogey said with a nod. "But you'll never get in, so you may as well go home."

Mandy shook her head. "We can't do that. We've still got three thousand words to go through."

"Three thousand, huh?" Grim mused. "That much...we've got quite a bit of ground to cover still. That means I should have time for a little conversation with Claudie..."

"Cool your jets, reaper." Mandy yanked him back by his hood. "Which would you rather have, vengeance on Boogey or a chat with a cameo girl?"

Grim considered seriously. "I suppose the plot is going to dictate I get vengeance on Boogey, so I may as well enjoy it."

"So it's a fight you want, then?" Boogey asked with a dangerous smile. The two locked eyes, little sparks of anger darting between them. "So sorry to disappoint, Grimmy my boy, but I have a different sort of contest in mind. A contest you'll never win. You see this? This is the key to the door behind me," Boogey said, holding up a gnarled and twisted key that looked as if it had been carved from the branch of a decidedly sick tree. "And I'll give it to you... if you pay the ransom."

"All right, Boogey, I'm game," Grim growled. "What's the ransom?"

"Fifty words," Boogey said with a nod.

"Fifty words? That's all?" Grim snorted in disdain. "I can have fifty words in a single paragraph. Why, this line alone already is counting in at thirty one words. You really think you can hold onto that key with just fifty words?"

"Stop interrupting me, I wasn't done," Boogey snapped in irritation. "You always do that, it's so annoying. You never let anyone finish a thought or a pleasant conversation or a ransom demand. Now, can I continue, or are you going to open your fat yap again?"

"Stop beating around the bush and wasting words," Mandy said. "What's the rest of the ransom?"

"The ransom is fifty words that end in -ion," Boogey said with a fiendish grin. "You vocabulary philistines will never reach it."

"Oh! Oh!" Irwin forced his way out of the giant Martian wolverine's mouth, hopping over to them with his soggy, spit-covered cape dragging behind him. "Let me handle this, Mandy. Knowledge is my forte, yo!"

"Sure, knock yourself out," Mandy said with a wave of her hand, pulling up a chair. Grim took a seat as well, and Billy plopped down on his assicorn rear, munching on some popcorn.

"Well," Irwin began. "First, there's ion."

"Ion?" Boogey echoed. "That doesn't end in -ion, that doesn't count."

"The last three letters are i, o, and n, in that order, as per your demand," Irwin stated, holding up a finger in demonstration. "The fact that there are no other letters before it is irrelevant."

"Fine, I'll give you that one," Boogey said with a 'hmph' noise, folding his arms. "You'll never keep it up."

"In that vein, there's also anion," Irwin continued.

"That's not a word!" Boogey protested.

Mandy and Grim looked at each other, and then Grim pulled out a laptop. "About dot com says it is," he stated, holding up the laptop. "Says right there it's an ionic species having a negative charge."

"Learn some chemistry, yo," Irwin said with a scowl. From somewhere in the background, Claudie cheered.

"Fine, fine," Boogey said with a wave of his arm. "You won't make it much farther."

"Oh? Then how about mutation? Inflation? Aberration?" Irwin challenged.

Boogey began to count on his fingers as Irwin began a musical number, several of the Wandering cameos providing a dancing background. "There's correction, affection, and trepidation. Election, protection, and contradiction. Break it down with friction, then with traction. Y'all pay attention, it's the -ion rap!"

"It's pretty catchy," Billy said, tapping a hoof.

Boogey pulled out an adding machine, clicking away on the keys. "You're only up to fourteen. Can you really keep singing?"

"Don't show me no attrition, yo," Irwin shot back, "and that's fifteen. And if you can't make that calculation, let me give you a continuation. We've got nation, elevation, abomination. Citation, elation, undulation. If you need a definition, sign up for my subscription. But if you want a confrontation, here's my declaration. I'm the dhampire mummy boy with a terrible inflection, but when it comes to vocabulary I'm in the right direction. Think you can keep a record up with my rotation? I'll word up, yo, with rhymes and 'pontification'!"

"This role is perfect for Irwin," Mandy said with a shake of her head. "It's amazing and pathetically nerdy at the same time."

"What's the count now, Boogey?" Grim called cheerfully, enjoying watching the Boogey Man sweat.

"Thirty one," he got out. "But he has to be running dry by now. No one can rap all the way up to fifty."

"You hear that? He's hatin on my alliteration," Irwin shouted. "Player hater who can't make no pacification. You think rap is all about crimes and justification? Some of us spread the love with harmonization. Mandy says I'm only for wolverine detection, but I'll win her heart with my socialization. Nerdiness is my specialization, and today the Boogey Man is losing to erosion and occasion!"

"He's up to forty!" Billy crowed. "Break it down, Irwin!"

"Number ten comes from dehydration, but number nine needs no commendation. Eight is just my humble opinion, and seven will make a good connection. Six may cause a little contrition, and by five you may be struck with temptation. Four is a fusion with number three, and allusion is the reference to where it be. Take number two as my revolution, because number one is the final solution!"

The entire hall broke into applause as Boogey sank to his knees. "Why? How could I bested by a nerd?" he cried out. "Where did I go wrong?"

"Well," Mandy said, "you really shouldn't have picked something that was a Latin suffix. Didn't you know how much English robbed from Latin?"

"Well, all the Romance languages were doing it," Grim pointed out. "It wanted in on the action too."

"All right, Boogey," Mandy said, putting away the chair and letting Billy scarf the rest of the popcorn, the assicorn tossing it down his throat, bowl and all, in a single gulp. "You lost, fair and square. Cough up the key to the next room and we won't have Grim banish you to an alternate dimension."

"No! You can't make me. I refuse to admit defeat, even if I was defeated."

"Isn't that sort of like admitting defeat?"

"No! It's nothing alike. And I am not admitting anything and I will not give you the key. You can't make me. There's no way in the world you can make me."

"Oh, I can think of a few thousand ways I can make you," Grim growled out. "Most of them involve violence that may be a bit much for a PG fic, though."

"There's an easier way, Grim," Mandy told him with a shake of her head. "See, the author wouldn't allow him to hold out on us."

"The author? What makes you think the author cares about us or our opinions and trials? Do you remember the chapter that does not exist?"

"Yes, I'm well aware you spent over twenty thousand words as 'Grim the Scary' and enjoyed every moment of it. My point is," Mandy continued, "unless we get the key from him, the story can't continue, and none of us are motivated enough to find a way around Boogey in less than two thousand words. So, he'll give us the key."

"No! No! A thousand times no!" Boogey protested as his hand moved to the pocket where he kept the key, slowly pulling it out. "Bad hand! Stop it! I'll have you put in time out!" He then handed the key over to Mandy, hanging his head in shame. "All right. I've been defeated. Take the key, I don't care. You won't like what you find behind that door."

"Is it spiders?" Billy asked, eyes growing wide with imagined terror. "Or... worse yet, _clowns_?"

Boogey considered. "I should have told him to add clowns. That would have been a nice touch."

"Not clowns!" Billy protested.

"At any rate, there's no clowns," Boogey said, stepping aside. "But I think you might be surprised and agonized at the sudden but inevitable betrayal."

The three of them looked at each other, then Mandy put the gnarled key in the lock, jiggling it a little before she got the lock to unlock. Grasping the handle slowly, she pulled it open.

Inside, the room was pitch black at first, then little puffs of blue flame lit up a walkway, leading them further in, as if they were heroes in a SquareEnix game walking into the lair of their mortal enemy. "Spooky," Billy said as he walked forward on all fours, giving his horn a toot. "It almost looks like cotton candy."

"Stay close, Mandy," Grim whispered to her. "If things go bad, we'll toss Billy at him and run for it."

"You'd actually stick your neck out for me?" she questioned, looking at him oddly.

"Well, I need someone to go out with me in case I need a second toss," he told her. "Ow!" Unsurprisingly, Mandy smacked him.

Ahead of them, the lights fanned out, highlighting strange, esoteric sculptures set in the walls, making the taste of the designer questionable at best and tacky at worst. "Welcome, Billy, Mandy, Grim Reaper," came a voice out of the darkness, a shape becoming visible against the backdrop of blue flames, a small, rounded shape. "I've been expecting you. Yes, I've been expecting you for quite some time. For far too long. I'd say about forty eight thousand, six hundred and ninety words and four seasons too long."

"Who's there?" Grim said, holding out his magic scythe. "Show yourself!"

"I'm right here, Grim Reaper. Right here... and waiting." The blue flames around them hissed as they leapt up in lines toward the ceiling.

"Grim!" Billy whispered. "I think there's someone behind the hamster!"

"No," Mandy said, her eyes widening in realization, and then narrowing in suspicion. "I think it _is_ the hamster. Isn't that right... Mr. Snuggles?"

The hamster turned around, and now the trio could indeed see it was Mr. Snuggles, the plain, pathetic, sickly and elderly hamster. "I've long awaited this day, the three of you," the hamster said with a smile. "You'll never get the plot device back. I am the one who controls your reality now. Look!" he said, pointing, and Billy was now a pig with wings. "There's nothing I can't do now."

"But why, Mr. Snuggles?" Billy said, pig eyes filling with tears. "I thought we were your friends."

"Friends? Hah! Don't make me laugh," the hamster snorted. "You haven't been _my_ friend since you picked up that hideous, bony thing!"

"Watch it," Grim growled. "I can still collect your soul, little hamster."

"You are powerless before me," the hamster said, and pointed at Grim. Grim turned into a stuffed Grim Reaper shaped toy. "You see? It's all over. I win and you three shall become my puppets!"

"Ooh! Ooh! Can I be Kermit?" Billy asked. "I like being green."

"That's a 'muppet', not a puppet," Mr. Snuggles told him. "And stop using Dilbert jokes."

"Why are you doing this, Mr. Snuggles?" Mandy asked him. "We risked our lives against the Grim Reaper so _you_ could go on living."

"Who are you trying to fool? You weren't thinking about me when you dared the Grim Reaper to enter that contest. You were only thinking of yourselves and what fun it would be to have the Grim Reaper for your new pet. Mr. Grim, the hamster," Mr. Snuggles said, and turned Grim into a hamster. "I was just a red herring to set up the premise of the show!"

"I sort of resent the irony of this," Grim grumbled, folding his tiny arms.

"Your suffering is nothing compared to mine, Grim Reaper! When you took Billy and Mandy from me, I was thrown into a pit of unimaginable despair! No more was I fed sunflower seeds and carrots and given cardboard tubes to chew on! I had been knocked from my perch, never to be on screen again, banished to the farthest corners under Billy's bed. Oh, it was harsh," Mr. Snuggles recalled, flashing back to those days. "The dust bunnies were cruel and merciless, and the abandoned toys and board game pieces offered me no solace, no comfort from the agony of my existence. It was then, Grim Reaper, that I swore revenge on you and on the two who had come to neglect me. After that day, I traveled afar and wide, searching for the conduit that would allow me to exact my revenge. It took me a full season to find a teacher of the dark arts that would allow me to become his apprentice, and I spent another three seasons learning before I was out on my own. Not once during those long years afterwards did I stop to rest, always studying, never tiring from my search for a method to destroy the lot of you. And then, I found it. In a dusty, old abandoned script, I found the secret to your universe, to the ways it always repaired itself. Yes, my humble puppets, that was the secret of the plot device. I searched, and at last I found it, and learned to bend it to my will. And now I have. All is as I predicted it would come to pass. You have come to me, and now I shall do with you as I will. There will be endless running on wheels, and dirty bedding that doesn't get changed, and squealing children who poke you in the face with their fingers and squeeze too hard! You shall all know the pain that I have felt!"

"No," Mandy said quietly, "I'm quite afraid you've lost."

"Lost? I have the upper hand, I have the plot device, I have your friends turned into useless creatures. I have everything!" Mr. Snuggles crowed. "How can you possibly think I have lost?"

"Do you hear that sound, Mr. Snuggles?"

He paused. "I hear nothing. You're bluffing."

"That's the sound," Mandy told him, "of forty nine thousand, four hundred and eighty nine words rushing at you, preparing to crush you against the barrier of fifty thousand. You can't defeat us, Mr. Snuggles, because _there aren't enough words left to do so._"

Mr. Snuggles gasped, and then tried to minimize his actions to save words. "It's plenty of words! I'll defeat you now!"

"You can't," Mandy interrupted, smirking a little. "Hey Billy!"

"Yes, Mandy?" the pig with wings replied.

"Start singing."

"Sing what, Mandy?"

"Anything's fine."

Billy thought about it. "I see a little sihlouetto of a man!"

"Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the Fandango," came a joyful chorus from the Hall of Wandering Cameos.

"Stop talking!" Mr. Snuggles demanded. "You're wasting my words!"

"Four hundred words left, Mr. Snuggles," Mandy told him. "What can you do? Keep singing, Billy."

"I'm so glad we found a legitimate use for this song," Billy told her. "Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me! Galileo!"

"Galileo," Grim chimed in.

"Galileo!"

"Galileo!"

"Galileo Figaro, Magifico, oh, oh, oh, oh," the Hall of Wandering Cameos chimed in.

Mandy reached into a hole in space and time, and pulled out her electric guitar. "We're bringing this fic down with rock and roll."

"No! I can't be defeated in this manner!" Mr. Snuggles screamed. "I've waited so many seasons for my revenge, even through a cancellation of the show itself! Who knew that I could be bested by excessive monologueing and Queen?"

"I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me," Billy continued, prancing around on his pig hooves. "Take that, Mr. Snuggles!"

"He's just a poor boy, from a poor family! Spare him his life from this monstrosity!" The cameos from the Hall of Wandering Cameos began to filter in, Claudie sticking post-it notes on everyone, the sunflower guy handing out sunflowers, the black-haired guy making a general nuisance of himself, and Heather returning to beat Billy with the encyclopedia.

Billy suffered through the beating gladly, belting out the next line. "Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?"

"Bismillah! No, we will not let you go!"

"Stop!" screamed Mr. Snuggles. "Stooooop!"

"Let him go!"

"Bismillah! We will not let you go!"

"Let him go!"

"Bismillah! We will not let you go!"

"Let me go!"

"Will not let you go!"

"Let me go!"

"Will not let you go!"

"Let me go, oh, oh, oh, oh!"

"No!" said Billy as he was beaten.

"No!" said Heather as he tried to get away.

"No!" said the sunflower guy, since he hadn't had a speaking line.

"No!" said Irwin, who was somehow still there.

"No!" said Grim, bouncing on his little hamster legs.

"No!" said Mandy, throwing out a dramatic chord on the electric guitar.

"NO!" screamed Mr. Snuggles.

And lo, the sunlight broke through the clouds that were not inside, and the author looked down at her wordcount, and declared it was good. With the rendering of the Bohemian Rhapsody, the plot device was restored, and everything was returned to normal. However, because the author was a little evil, and it was a classic, rocks fell, and everyone died. The end.


End file.
